Analysts and diplomats last week were hinting at a possible attitudinal shift in Beijing on the North Korea issue after China, Pyongyang’s longtime ally, voted for UN Security Council Resolution 2094, which imposes additional sanctions on North Korea to punish it for conducting its third nuclear test on Feb. 12. However, despite signaling displeasure with Pyongyang’s brinkmanship, Beijing does not yet seem willing to do what is required to stop its neighbor from flirting with weapons of Armageddon.
The signs on Thursday last week were promising: Beijing had signed on to the latest round of sanctions, while some influential figures, such as retired People’s Liberation Army major general Luo Yuan (羅援), a prominent foreign policy hawk, were warning North Korea that although both nations had been “comrade[s] and brothers-in-arms in the past,” if Pyongyang harmed China’s national interests, “we’ll get even with you.”
However, if the reports that emerged on Monday are any indication, the optimism may have been a little premature. Beijing’s apparent change of heart might be nothing more than cosmetic.
After years of investigation, US and South Korean authorities have uncovered what are said to be dozens of accounts at several banks in Shanghai and elsewhere in China belonging to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The South Korean government believes that the freezing of these slush funds, which reportedly contain hundreds of millions of US dollars, could put a serious dent in Pyongyang’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Unfortunately, Seoul’s urgings that the China-based banks be included in the latest round of sanctions against Pyongyang were reportedly ignored, a shortcoming that puts the effectiveness of the sanctions regime into question.
Once again, despite universal condemnation of a regime that consistently defies international law, threatens regional security and has reduced its population to starvation, Beijing is failing to do what is necessary to put an end to the problem. Its inaction ensures that North Korea will continue to destabilize the region and threaten war in this increasingly important part of the world.
That is not to say that Pyongyang’s intransigence has not forced some Chinese to re-evaluate their assumptions about their neighbor. However, while some tactical adjustments may be seen on China’s part to deal with this growing malaise, the likelihood that major policy changes will occur at the strategic level is very slim.
Beijing wants to have it both ways: It wants to see North Korea abandon its nuclear ambitions, but not at the cost of undermining the regime and destabilizing the country.
This dual approach is at the heart of China’s North Korea policy and ensures that a resolution will remain nowhere in sight, a “status quo” that serves the additional purpose of keeping US and Japanese forces focused on Pyongyang, rather than on its own military expansion and territorial ambitions.
As long as the North continues to be run by an unpredictable regime — which the young Kim, like his father, former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, appears prepared to do — South Korean, Japanese and US forces will remain tied up in North Korea and will be unable to allocate additional manpower to areas of less immediate concern, such as the East and South China seas, as well as the Taiwan Strait.
Therefore, it would be foolish to expect Beijing to fully cooperate with Japan and the West on the North Korea issue. As long as tensions and instability on the Korean Peninsula remain manageable and continue to serve Beijing’s national interests, Zhongnanhai will not be a partner we can count on to rein in the crazies in Pyongyang.
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
Within Taiwan’s education system exists a long-standing and deep-rooted culture of falsification. In the past month, a large number of “ghost signatures” — signatures using the names of deceased people — appeared on recall petitions submitted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) against Democratic Progressive Party legislators Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶). An investigation revealed a high degree of overlap between the deceased signatories and the KMT’s membership roster. It also showed that documents had been forged. However, that culture of cheating and fabrication did not just appear out of thin air — it is linked to the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
On April 19, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave a public speech, his first in about 17 years. During the address at the Ketagalan Institute in Taipei, Chen’s words were vague and his tone was sour. He said that democracy should not be used as an echo chamber for a single politician, that people must be tolerant of other views, that the president should not act as a dictator and that the judiciary should not get involved in politics. He then went on to say that others with different opinions should not be criticized as “XX fellow travelers,” in reference to
RSS