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Beijing's influence on North Korea
overstated
By Antonaeta Bezlova
BEIJING - In a rare display of its public stand
on the North Korea nuclear crisis, Beijing has dispelled
hopes that it can play a major peacemaking role in the
standoff between Washington and Pyongyang.
An
opinion piece on Friday in the Communist Party's
flagship newspaper, the People's Daily, said that since
the United States does not dare fight North Korea, it
should talk to it. It foresaw no room for mediation on
the part of Beijing, as it placed the blame on
Washington for its standoff with North Korea, which has
been growing since Pyongyang admitted to a secret
uranium-enrichment program in October.
"It is
not that the US does not want to use force, but rather
it fears the consequences will be unimaginable," said
the People's Daily Online. "Judged from the
international macro-environment, an inordinate
intransigent US attitude toward Korea is inappropriate,"
it continued. The paper said dialogue through diplomatic
channels should be the way to solve the current
standoff.
US President George W Bush "is well
aware that subduing the opponent's troops without
fighting a battle, as contained in the Master Sun
[Tzu]'s Art of War, is the best policy," the
article concluded.
China has been looked upon as
the only big power that capable of influencing its
obstinate Stalinist neighbor, North Korea, but Beijing
has been reticent on making a clear-cut stand on how it
could sway Pyongyang to comply with its international
obligations.
While China shares the desire of
United States, South Korea and Japan to avert a nuclear
crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Beijing's leverage over
Pyongyang is far less than what appears.
"China
advocates the non-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula
and the maintenance of its peace and stability,"
remarked Chinese President Jiang Zemin to visiting
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on
Thursday. "Words, not weapons, are the answer," the
English-language China Daily quoted Jiang as saying.
It is customary for Jiang to advocate a peaceful
solution to the Korean nuclear problem. Yet like the
remarks he made when meeting Bush in Texas in October
after the crisis broke out with Pyongyang's admission of
its nuclear program, Jiang has not elaborated on
Beijing's means to resolve the impasse.
In fact,
ever since China's late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping
steered China on to the road to market reforms and
criticized the excesses of the leadership cult in North
Korea, relations between the two countries have lost
much of their ardor.
Once close ideological
allies, over the past two decades China and North Korea
have grown apart - China reforming its state-planned
economy and opening to the outside world and North Korea
falling into economic stagnation and political
isolation.
The more China has evolved into a
normal global power, integrated into the international
community and committed to playing a role in
international politics, the more frustrated has Beijing
become with the erratic and unreliable decisions coming
from Pyongyang.
After establishing diplomatic
relations with South Korea in 1992, Beijing lost even
more ground in its attempt to persuade the North to
duplicate China's economic reform and to stop relying on
aid to prop its obsolete economy.
Another
irritating factor for Beijing has been North Korea's
refugees - thousands of men, women and children, who,
made desperate by the lack of food and fearing political
persecution, have since 1996 crossed the frontier with
China.
Beijing fears that a collapse of Kim
Jong-il's regime may lead to millions more refugees at
China's border. Beijing has repeatedly denied the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees permission to set
up camps on the border, and has instead launched a
manhunt for refugees, imprisoning those who shelter
them.
Though frustrated with North Korea's
mismanagement of its economy and aware of its limited
influence on the current government, China is committed
to preserving the status quo on the peninsula by
obstructing any attempts of the United States to topple
Kim Jong-il.
Instead of blaming Kim's nuclear
ambitions and deception of the international community,
Chinese state-run media are pointing the finger at
Bush's "axis of evil" theory as the main culprit for the
current crisis.
"The hardline attitude adopted
by Washington toward the DPRK [Democratic Republic of
Korea, North Korea's official name] nuclear issue has
done nothing but escalate tensions on the Korean
Peninsula," says Chinese analyst Hu Xuan in the China
Daily.
Critics say that Washington remains
hardline despite the issuance on Tuesday of a joint
US-Japan-South Korean communique in which Washington -
after vowing for weeks not to talk to Pyongyang until it
dismantled its nuclear weapons - said it was willing to
"talk" to North Korea. Many US analysts have said they
doubt that Washington's statement means a real change in
its position. Its offer of talks was flatly rejected by
Pyongyang.
"The ball is in their court," said
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "We'd like to hear
from North Korea about the steps they're taking to come
back into compliance with international obligations so
they will dismantle their nuclear-weapons program."
"Washington's blunt rejection of the DPRK's
[call] for talks would be no help to a peaceful solution
in the case. And some US officials' saber-rattling is
especially detrimental to the international community's
joint efforts in preventing a nuclear crisis in the
peninsula," said another China Daily commentary that
urged Washington to recognize North Korea.
"What
lies in the core of North Korea's nuclear issue is not
Pyongyang's nuclear program itself but the need to
establish a new,
adequate-to-the-new-international-situation relation
between the North and the United States," said the
newspaper Global Times, which is published by the
People's Daily.
Beijing has made clear that
direct dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington is the
only way out of the current impasse.
But while
it can do little to influence Pyongyang to drop its
nuclear intention before sitting at the negotiating
table, China has not abandoned its ambitions to be part
of any multilateral peacemaking action taken by South
Korea, the United States, Japan and
Russia.
(Inter Press Service)
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