By That is what the Stars & Stripes is wondering:
North Korea’s most crucial ally is exploring shifts in its policy toward the authoritarian regime, experts on East Asian relations said last week.
China hasn’t taken any major actions against North Korea beyond signing the U.N. resolution condemning Pyongyang’s May 25 nuclear test and calling for unforced inspections of suspected weapons cargo.
But criticism in China’s government-authorized media of North Korea has grown to levels that were never tolerated until now, said Jonathan Pollack, professor of Asian-Pacific studies at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. Pollack has written more than 25 books and research reports, including books on U.S.-Chinese relations and on North Korea. His current research centers on North Korean nuclearization.
“What I am seeing is an openness to explore issues. There is much more sanction in authorized media to talk about North Korea in a frank way,” Pollack said. “This can be used as a basis for what we have to assume is an internal reassessment, in light of all that is happening now.”
In 2003, a Chinese journal published a paper hostile to the Kim regime and was quickly shut down, Pollack said.
Now, a series of articles in World Knowledge, a Chinese Foreign Ministry-backed journal, openly explores what China gets in return for its diplomatic and economic support of Pyongyang.
Other media outlets are discussing the succession of Kim Jong-il, who is rumored to be ill.
“It’s unimaginable that the issue of succession would have been raised in authorized Chinese publications in the past,” Pollack said.
“It really suggests to me that they are looking at North Korea differently. It’s definitely a change from the past, in my view.” [Stars & Stripes]
No, Chinese policy on North Korea isn’t changing, just the rhetoric is. Nightwatch has a better analysis on what is going on in Beijing:
China whined today that the non-communist alliance should not expect China to rein in North Korea. This is the consistent Chinese position even though China remains the essential lifeline of North Korea, from banking to exports.
Expect the Chinese to do nothing to North Korea that interferes with China’s rise as the strategic leader in Asia. (…………….)
The political and military leaders, including Kim, know the North will lose everything in such a fight which explains the NightWatch hypothesis that the North is constantly running a bluff. The situation is preposterous. One of the smallest and poorest countries in the world – even fully armed — is a trivial opponent to the most powerful country in the history of humanity.
North Korea exists because the Alliance plus China does not want to take responsibility for sustaining the world’s largest refugee camp — the people of North Korea. This is the stuff of dark comedy because the North’s diplomats have been told that North Korea will not survive a war, but South Korea will. Hence, the bluff hypothesis. [Nightwatch]
2:07 pm on June 28th, 2009 1
“One of the smallest and poorest countries in the world – even fully armed — is a trivial opponent to the most powerful country in the history of humanity”—
Oh my goodness, We are even more powerfull than the Romans of Ancient? What a compliment.
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June 28th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
While likely to lose, I doubt 1 million people under arms and in uniform would be considered trivial. As well as the thousands of artillory pieces aimed at South Korea.
I suspect the truth is somewhere inbetween. Chinas opinion of the DPRK is changing as China is changing, and North Korea remains stagnant.
China knows, as does most of the world, that the DPRK will collapse sooner or later, its only a matter of time , and that time may be sooner than later. So China does what it needs to do.
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5:21 pm on June 29th, 2009 2
The NK problem has nothing to do with refugees and everything to do with the US and Taiwan. Anyone who beleives otherwise is a dim wit.
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