China policy option to N.Korea : guiding reform

　　North Korea presents some major challenges to the region and the world, not least those around its often arbitrary behaviour. In recent weeks, it has allowed family reunions with South Korean families split by the 1950-53 war which divided the country at the 38th parallel, and it has also hinted at action with the Japanese on the abductees who were taken from Japan secretly in the 1970s and early 1980s But at the same time, it also responded strongly to the South Korean and American joint military maneuvers, and used extremely uncivil language about President Pak when she made comments about the DPRK's nuclear programme and how it should end in late March.  There is no easy way to predict the regime's behaviour, and this is probably the one certainly we can prescribe to it. As Andrei Lankov, one of the most respected experts on the country in the world wrote in a book last year, no other country could be able to attract such high level attention across the world, or be able to plot its way into the agendas of global meetings as that of the DPRK. And it seems that the new leader, Kim Yong En has inherited this ability to confuse and bewilder just as much as his father.

　　Chinese leaders have traditionally wanted to stress that they are close to North Korea, they are its true ally, and that they will do what it takes to ensure that North Korea survives at least as a stable country and one that has to be free of US influence. Strategically, the last thing that China would want is to see a unified peninsula under US hegemony. This issue is often forgotten, but it is important. China fought with the North Korean armies of Kim Il Sung in the war from 1950 t0 1953, using over 2 million solidiers and suffering colossal losses, including Mao Zedong's own son. It was a fight that they invested a huge amount in, and one on which leaders even today have strong opinions.

　　In the period of most instability in the 2000s, even when the DPRK had clearly shown its intention to have nuclear capacity, the senior leaders in Beijing, while voicing frustration, did not forsake their small neighbouring ally.  Leaders like Wu Bangguo and even the President Hu Jintao stressed that they were in a relationship `like lips and teeth' and that they needed to stand by each other. China became the country's largest supplier of aid, largest trade partner, and largest supplier of energy. It also became the sole diplomatic support as the Six Party talks which had been started under the Bush administration and involved Russia, South Korea, China, the DPRK, Japan and the US came to an end.

　　Since the death of Kim Jong Il in late 2011, the DPRK has sent increasingly confusing signals. On the one hand, it has embraced some modest market reforms under the new and relatively young leadership of Kim Yong Un. But on the other hand, it has also continued its task of nuclearisation, despite China's concerns, and has adopted a truculent attitude to the outside world. The execution of one of Kim's chief advisors in late 2013, something wholly unexpected by the outside world, only underlined just how hard it is to judge North Korea and predict its actions.

　　We can see now that the DPRK ruling elite, which may number up to 100,000 of those who can be classified as relatively well off and real stakeholders in the current system, are caught in a trap. On the one hand, reform is desperately needed to give new energy to an economy decimated by years of isolation and poor management. From parity in the 1970s, North Korea now has an economy only 2 per cent of the size of South Korea. This is profoundly humiliating. On the other hand, however, economic reforms are almost certain to cause huge political turmoil, and may well see the end of the political system as it exists. The incentives therefore for the current rulers to really introduce deep reforms is very low. Their current strategy seems to just survive, even though they do this by highly contentious and unorthodox methods. It is for good reasons that one historian has called North Korea a `guerilla state'. It lives in constant peril and has adopted extreme methods to carry on - sometimes trading in illegal substances to raise revenue, and often blackmailing the rest of the world to give it the sort of support and material benefits it needs.

　　Many Chinese policy makers feel frustration at their small neighbor, despite the friendly language. They feel that the DPRK should introduce the same controlled reforms that China did in the 1980s when it embarked on reform and opening up. They have shown leaders like Kim Jong Il the science parks in Shanghai and Shenzhen and tried to give him some idea of how you could have a socialist system but at the same time have the benefits of capitalism. There were signs in the early 2000s that markets were being accepted in North Korea, and this may just have been because there was no way of stopping people in an era of incredible hardship try to make some money illicitly when the command economy failed. But legally markets have never been embraced in North Korea, and the major free trade zone which was set up over a decade ago remains a failure with only a few foreign enterprises.

　　Kim Jong Un has so far failed to visit Beijing, and there is a lack of clarity about who around him now advises him. He was educated in Switzerland, which might give him a more open attitude to economics, but so far has made no bold moves to reform the internal system. Visitors recently report that there are more cars on the streets of Pyongyang, more mobile phones and more internet coverage, and that small markets do still exist. The underlying narrative that legitimizes the regime however is still exhaustively promoted. That is that the DPRK's problems were all caused by the outside world, particularly the US and Japan, and that it is a victim of other's aggression. It looks at what has happened in the outside world, particularly in the Middle East, and draws the conclusion that only with a strong military defense will it survive. This is why nuclear weapons of some sort are a huge part of its strategy. When it sees the former Libyan leader Colonel Qaddafi murdered in broad daylight and his government toppled, it links this to his renouncing of nuclear weapons. For the North Korean current ruling elite, Nuclear weapons are the ultimate security guarantee.

　　For China, this part of their thinking is the hardest to accept. China already has, in India, Pakistan and Russia, three nuclear powers on its borders. It now has to face a fourth, and one that is, in addition, extremely unstable and unpredictable.  It has far less leverage over North Korea than many think, because it is dealing in Pyongyang with ultra nationalists, people who have made their state similar to a religion and therefore regard all outsiders, including Chinese, as being potential enemies. China now has a completely different system to North Koreas, despite both countries having Communist party systems and Politburos where the political power is located. For North Korea, all power flows solely from the Kim family, and from the leading figure in this, Kim Yong Un. There is no equivalent emperor like figure in China, where power is now more dispersed.

　　For China, the main calculation is that they know what they don't want - a unified peninsula on the US's terms. But they are probably not so clear what they want. A weak DPRK for today is probably acceptable. One that would topple and fail would cause problems of instability and threat. China does not want millions of starving, desperate migrants coming across its north eastern borders. Nor does it want a North Korea that provokes Japan, South Korea and other countries into conflict. So most of its diplomatic effort in Pyongyang is spent on tactical issues. Giving the country enough support as an ally, but not so much that it becomes tied down. It is likely that China finds North Korea as frustrating as the rest of the world, but it has less means to distance itself because of its geographical and political proximity. China must often feel used by North Korea, and this might be behind the relative cooling of relations in the last year or so.

　　In its current form, North Korea might be able to survive for many years. But no one pretends that it is a sustainable economic and political entity in the longer term. It is, as one UK analyst called it, a regime creaking at the seams and one that is unsustainable. So the main policy consideration for China is how to influence and try to guide North Korean behaviour so that a reform process might be as smooth as possible. This is a huge task. At the moment, it seems, no one has any easy answers.

　　Professor Kerry Brown

　　Kerry Brown is Professor of Chinese Politics and Director of the China Studies Centre, University of Sydney and Team Leader of the Europe China Research and Advice Network (ECRAN) funded by the European Union. He is an Associate Fellow of Chatham House, London and author of `Struggling Giant: China in the 21st Century' (2007), `The Rise of the Dragon: Chinese Inward and Outward Investment in the Reform Era' (2008), `Friends and Enemies: The Past, Present and Future of the Communist Party of China' (2009), `Ballot Box China' (2011), `China 2020' (2011), `Hu Jintao: China's Silent Leader'(forthcoming).