Historically, the Chinese have uneasily allied themselves with North Korea. But being allied with North Korea is sort of like having Ted Kaczynski for a younger brother. Yes, he’s your brother, but you’re never quite sure what he’s up to in that little shack in the hills.
But in the end, even Ted Kaczynski’s brother turned him in when it became clear that Ted was blowing stuff up. So it appears to be with the Chinese. From John Promfret’s column in the WashPo:
There are surprising noises coming from China these days about North Korea. One influential Chinese academic thinks China’s policy — long supportive of the hermit kingdom — might be changing.
The government has been pretty careful about what it has said and what is done. But the tone from China’s scholars has changed significantly from a few years back when they would eschew on-the-record quotes for anything that was even mildly controversial. That means something; I don’t know exactly what but it might be a sign of change.
Case in point is Zhu Feng’s recent piece. Zhu is a political heavyweight. He’s the deputy director of the Center for International & Strategic Studies at Peking Univesity.
Zhu basically argues that 1) North Korea’s claim that it carried out two nuclear tests because the UN Security Council criticized it for its sat/missile test is bogus. He cites “Chinese experts” who tell him that North Korea would have needed six months to prepare a test. That means, Zhu said, that North Korea planned to undertake these tests all along.
This leads Zhu to a pretty significant, and I’d argue newsworthy, conclusion about China’s role in all this. China, he said, had always believed that North Korea’s nuclear program was negotiable. That Pyongyang might be willing to give up its nukes as long as its economic and security interests could be met. Now, Zhu writes, all the evidence “points in the opposite direction. In fact, the recent nuclear test by the DPRK is not just a slap in the face of China, but a sobering wake-up call for the Chinese leadership to face up to the malignant nature of their North Korean counterparts.”
You can read Zhu Feng’s entire piece here. Bottom line, Zhu says that as long China thought that Ted could be talked out of bomb-building, they were not really worried. But if Ted now views bomb-making as a grown-up occupation instead of just as a way to piss off his elders, then it might be time to turn him in.
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