Outbursts from Pyongyang act as an obvious incentive for the United States, Japan, and South Korea to keep large, capable assets adjacent to China. North Korea’s provocations have been tactically, not strategically, dangerous for decades, with adverse consequences for Beijing. And although the likelihood of Pyongyang attacking Seoul is slightly higher, it is still quite low given the U.S. Kim has long shown himself to be rational enough to understand that any strike against the United States would be suicidal. hawks’ insistence last year that Washington cannot live with a nuclear North Korea, it actually can: conventional deterrence has lasted 65 years, and nuclear deterrence should be stable, too, as the United States has learned to live with the development of nuclear weapons in other hostile states-such as Pakistan, the Soviet Union, and 1960s China. The great erroneous cliché of Western cable news reporting is that the Korean Peninsula teeters on the edge of war. Moreover, North Korea is simply not all that important for U.S. And crucially, a collapse could foster the desire for statehood among the millions of ethnic Koreans living in China-who, unlike several other Chinese minorities, have not traditionally agitated against party rule in part because it is far better than living in North Korea. These could fall into the hands of peripheral separatists from Xinjiang or Tibet, for example, or opportunistic global smugglers. In addition, a North Korean collapse could create a problem of loose nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons on China’s doorstep. This remains a major concern of the Chinese Communist Party. forces on the peninsula as a concession to Kim, but Southern-led unification would obviate any such deal.
government in Seoul, potentially allowing the United States to stage troops near China’s border. A collapse, or even a continuation of extreme sanctions, would have a noticeable negative economic impact on that area.Ī collapse would also see the peninsula likely unify under a pro-U.S. Moreover, although North Korea’s economic impact on China is minuscule overall, trade with it aids the economy of China’s northeast, a “rust belt” region left behind in China’s economic modernization. The ruling Chinese Communist Party is ill-equipped to deal with a refugee crisis: it lacks a resettlement policy and has not dealt with a mass influx of refugees since the 1970s. In such an event, or in the case of a serious destabilization, Beijing would potentially have to handle thousands, or even millions, of refugees fleeing across the porous border between the two nations. Why is North Korea ultimately China’s problem? For one, Beijing fears a North Korean collapse far more than Washington does. officials and journalists have unnecessarily Americanized the issue ever since. And although Trump could have followed through on it far more subtly and effectively, this instinct was right. Indeed, on June 1, Trump said China and South Korea would be responsible for rebuilding North Korea: “That’s their neighborhood it’s not our neighborhood.” Those remarks fit with Trump’s first instinct on North Korea, which was to push China to do more. He should also privately communicate to Xi his respect for North Korea’s position in China’s sphere of influence. political and diplomatic involvement while reminding him that the roughly 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea will remain on the peninsula. government has taken ownership of an issue more than 5,000 miles from its mainland when regional players with far greater “skin in the game” should be playing a much larger role in the process.īecause North Korea is more a problem for China than the United States, Trump in Singapore should make clear to Kim the future limits of U.S.
It is one of the oddities of Northeast Asian diplomacy that the U.S. In other words, the North Korean nuclear issue, and indeed the entire debate over the North, has become far too Americanized.
officials have assumed far too much responsibility for what is in large part China’s problem. President Donald Trump’s explosive announcement in March 2018 of a forthcoming summit between him and Kim-which still seems likely to happen on June 12-U.S. As North Korea’s neighbor, largest trading partner, and most important patron, China is both the country most responsible for facilitating Pyongyang’s provocations and the one with the most to lose should the regime collapse-always a possibility for so shambolic a polity.Īnd yet in the months prior to U.S. Over the last two decades, Kim and his father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il, have met more with Chinese leaders than with all other foreign leaders combined. It was no surprise that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s first known meeting with a foreign leader since taking power in 2011 was his March visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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