Whereas Beijing pursues the “one China” policy in cross-strait relations and strives for Taiwan’s eventual unification with the Chinese mainland, it does not favor “one Korea.” Instead, in the name of peace and stability, it seeks to preserve the “status quo” in the Korean Peninsula.
China is South Korea’s largest trading partner and the Chinese economy has benefited immensely from South Korean investment and transfers of technology. The two are to sign a free-trade agreement at the end of this year. In addition to economic ties, geopolitical factors also figure prominently. South Korea is an important component of the US strategic pivot toward the Asia-Pacific region and therefore Beijing tries to play it off against Japan and the US.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) was in Seoul for a two-day visit last month. Wang and South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-so discussed North Korea’s increasing nuclear threat, fine-tuned the schedule and program for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) visit to South Korea toward the end of June, and other bilateral and regional issues. Yun called for Beijing to reaffirm “our common standpoint that we do not accept North Korean nuclear weapons.” Yun also asked China to make greater efforts to dissuade its erratic ally North Korea from conducting a fourth nuclear test and engaging in further provocation.
For his part, Wang called for a revival of the six-party talks aimed at the North’s denuclearization. This multilateral forum was hosted by China, and involved North and South Korea, the US, Japan and Russia.
The six-party talks consisted of five rounds of formal negotiations, plus numerous bilateral — US-North Korean — and trilateral — including China — informal consultations from 2003 to 2008, but Pyongyang refused to implement denuclearizaion, despite its formal pledge in the joint statement of September 2005.
No officials who took part in the forum from the US, Korea and Japan will admit it, but many analysts suspect things went terribly wrong from the perspectives of Washington and Seoul. They seem to have been hoodwinked by Pyongyang, with the connivance of Beijing.
In hindsight, the six-party talks and the other dialogues were a delaying tactic playing for the time necessary to enable North Korean scientists and weapons experts to undertake needed research for the development of nuclear arms and long-range missiles in 2006, 2009, 2012 and last year.
The US, South Korea and Japan have turned down China’s proposal to reopen the talks, but Beijing is not taking no for an answer. Wang pushed South Korean counterpart Yun hard, and offered to have South Korea “as a closer cooperating partner in the face of the new, grave challenges in the region and the world.” In the summit between Xi and South Korean President Park Geun-hye later this month, Xi is likely to push further joint efforts so as to draw South Korea closer to China.
Meanwhile, China is trying to drive a wedge into South Korean-US defense cooperation. Beijing has warned against the proposed US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense missile defense system in South Korea. In the wake of Pyongyang’s test-firings of a series of rockets off the coast of North Korea earlier this year, the US proposed the deployment of the advanced missile defense system in South Korea to intercept North Korean short, medium and intermediate-range missiles — and possibly Chinese missiles as well.
Seoul has been pursuing its own missile defense system, but Park has expressed willingness to study any fresh plans from the US. On the other hand, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has serious misgivings about the deployment of the US anti-missile system and sees it as provocative and destabilizing. A spokesman for the ministry said the deployment “will not help maintain stability and strategic balance in the region.”
Since Park took over as president of South Korea, her administration has devoted considerable effort to reunification. In March, she presented a three-point proposal on reunification in Dresden, Germany — billed as the Dresden Declaration by Seoul. The proposal offered support for North Korean babies and pregnant women through the UN, infrastructure development, exploration of natural resources and broader inter-Korea exchanges on history, culture and sports.
However, Pyongyang rejected Park’s proposal outright. A spokesman of the powerful North Korean National Defense Commission ridiculed Park’s proposal as the “daydream of a psychopath,” and “nonsense” full of “hypocrisy and deception,” but Park has approved government funding in the 2015 budget to establish a foundation for a reunified Korea and programs include her three-point proposal made in Dresden.
Park’s initiative makes Beijing uneasy. Preserving the “status quo” in the Korean Peninsula is a priority for Beijing and Park’s pursuit of reunifiucation could debilitate and destabilize North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s regime. Moreover, a reunified Korea in which South Korea absorbed the North is a nightmare for Beijing. Thus far, Beijing considers North Korea a valuable strategic buffer, and an asset which checks the US pivot to Asia.
Therefore, Beijing is unlikely to go all-out in pushing Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arms program, lip service notwithstanding. Chinese academics who are privy to the thinking of Beijing assert that stability in the Korean Peninsula is the top priority, not denuclearization. Beijing already sees North Korea as a de facto nuclear-armed country, and advises Washington and Seoul to accept it. Hence, the six-party talks should be reconvened, not to “solve” but to “manage” Pyongyang’s nuclear capability.
Park considers China an important economic and strategic partner, but she will find out at the forthcoming summit that the priorities of Korea and China are not identical. China has its own agenda in the Korean Peninsula and East Asia; its national interests are different, and might conflict with those of Korea.
Parris Chang is a professor emeritus of political science at Penn State University and chief executive of the Taiwan Institute for Political, Economic and Strategic Studies.
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