Analysis: An Alliance at Arm's Length
Council on Foreign Relations
October 20, 2006
Prepared by: Carin Zissis
At a closed-door meeting between a Chinese envoy and Kim Jong-Il, the reclusive North Korean leader said he would not stage a second nuclear test (BBC). News reports from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) described the mood at the meeting as "friendly," but Beijing has shown increasing signs of irritation with Pyongyang. Should a second test occur, China may take drastic measures and reduce oil exports (NYT), even going beyond recent UN sanctions.
The Chinese leadership feels "a great deal of anger personally at Kim and the Korean military" over the tests, says CFR Senior Fellow Adam Segal, in an interview with CFR.org’s Bernard Gwertzman. Fearing that sanctions could result in a regime collapse or refugee crisis (Reuters), Chinese officials called the nuclear blast “brazen” (LAT). Even some Chinese media, which is typically censored, gave surprisingly open coverage of Beijing’s apparent deep dissatisfaction with the tests, as this analysis from UC Berkeley’s China Digital Times explains. The blog North Korea Zone says the October 9 test was a play for Chinese attention; Pyongyang feels wounded over Beijing’s "romance" with South Korea, in which China sees Kim’s regime as “at best an inconvenience and irritant and at worst a dangerous, disruptive force.”
As North Korea’s biggest donor and trading partner (Heritage Foundation), China is viewed by U.S. policymakers as the one country with enough leverage to control the DPRK’s nuclear proliferation and bring it back to the negotiating table.
Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.
Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.
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