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Backgrounder: The China-North Korea Relationship

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Jayshree Bajoria, Staff Writer

Updated: June 18, 2008

Introduction

China is North Korea's most important ally, biggest trading partner, and main source of food, arms, and fuel. In the hope of avoiding regime collapse and an uncontrolled influx of refugees across its 800-mile border with North Korea, China has helped sustain Kim Jong-Il's regime and opposed harsh international economic sanctions. After Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon in October 2006, experts say that China has reconsidered the nature of its alliance to include both pressure and inducements. But Beijing, arguably, continues to have more leverage over Pyongyang than any other nation and has played a central role in the ongoing Six-Party Talks, the multilateral framework aimed at denuclearizing North Korea.

Strong Allies

China has supported North Korea ever since Chinese fighters flooded onto the Korean peninsula to fight for their comrades in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1950. Since the Korean War divided the peninsula between the North and South, China has lent political and economic backing to North Korea's leaders: Kim Il Sung and his son and successor, Kim Jong-Il.

In recent years, China has been one of the authoritarian regime's few allies. But this long-standing relationship suffered a strain when Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon in October 2006 and China agreed to UN Security Council Resolution 1718, which imposed sanctions on Pyongyang. By signing off on this resolution—as well as earlier UN sanctions that followed the DPRK's July 2006 missile tests—Beijing departed from its traditional relationship with North Korea, changing from a tone of diplomacy to one of punishment. Jonathan D. Pollack, an East Asia expert at the Naval War College, describes the DPRK's tests as "jarring" to China's diplomatic effort to compel North Korea to the Six-Party Talks.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 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.