Source: The New Republic (online)
On Monday, the much anticipated six-party talks, designed to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons program, will resume with renewed hopes, and, this time, the focus is on China. Regardless of the last four failures these talks yielded, President Bush expressed optimism about Beijing's role this time. At an October 31 press conference, he said that he was "pleased" with the revival of the talks and wanted "to thank the Chinese" for their crucial role in making yet another round of talks possible.
But the Bush administration has miscalculated. Once again, it has made policy around how it wishes China would behave, rather than recognizing what China is actually thinking. That's why, as long as the United States is putting all of its hopes on China, the talks are going to fail.
The idea that the United States can convince other countries to act in its own national interest, even at their own expense, has deep roots. In an important speech given to the National Committee on United States-China Relations last year, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick asserted that it was time for China to start acting as a responsible stakeholder in the international system that "has enabled its success." Politicians and academics have echoed him, emphasizing that China will soon realize that it can never reach great-power status without learning how to put aside its parochial interests for the sake of the global community.
In the case of the North Korea, the U.S. position has been that, eventually, China will have to apply more pressure and support broader sanctions in order to promote a positive international image. After the North's July 5 missile tests, some U.S. scholars and policy-makers predicted that the incident would be enough to pull China on board with severe sanctions: One senior American official commented that the United States was banking on the Chinese being furious with North Korea, and some commentators even speculated that Beijing might withhold oil shipments as leverage against Kim Jong Il's regime.
It didn't. Instead, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations rejected a tough Security Council Resolution against North Korea, opting instead for a nonbinding statement with no real threat of punishment. He also called on the Council's members to act "responsibly and prudently."
In fact, even after North Korea tested a nuclear weapon in October, all Kim got for defying China were harsh words and mild sanctions. Although China approved U.N. resolution 1718--designed to punish North Korea for its flagrant disregard for international law by banning a variety of goods, both military and luxury, from entering or exiting and imposing an asset freeze and travel ban on people involved in the nuclear program--the body of the resolution had to be reworked multiple times at China's behest until the language was softened and several provisions (which were essential for implementation) had been cut. But that didn't stop Undersecretary for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns from calling the resolution "unprecedented" and praising the "strong leadership from the U.S., Japan, China, and Russia."
This is all wishful thinking on the part of the United States. What's really happening is that Beijing simply sees what the United States describes as parochial interests as its own national interests--which it believes great powers are supposed to protect.
China has many national interests that its North Korea policy protects. The Communist Party's constant struggle for domestic legitimacy causes China to shield Pyongyang from international pressure, because any direct criticism of the North could open up a Pandora's box of discussion about pre-reform China as well as anger the families who lost loved ones in the Korean war. Furthermore, China wants economic development of its impoverished northeast--the region that borders North Korea and therefore has the most to lose from an influx of North Korean refugees. While China would like to see a denuclearized Korean peninsula, it is unwilling to compromise any important strategic interests for it. And, as the past four attest, it doesn't have to: China has achieved its goals (to maintain the status quo with North Korea and the United States) without actual denuclearization on the Korean peninsula.
In fact, China is even less likely to act now than it was before. After the North's nuclear test, whatever fears China harbored about a nuclearized Korea dissipated. Before, China's fears about a potential U.S. invasion of North Korea or a nuclear domino effect in the region gave it at least some incentive to try to resolve the issue. In hindsight, those concerns seemed overblown: Japan declared that it would not seek nuclear weapons, South Korea didn't even pull out from its industrial park at Kaesong in North Korean territory, and we didn't hear a peep out of Taiwan. Furthermore, the United States seemed to accept defeat, as the discussions turned from disbanding North Korea's nuclear program to keeping Kim from proliferating his technology.
That's why trying to make Beijing push the North is even more futile than persuading it to fear proliferation to unsavory regimes. China sees its reluctance to impose sanctions on impoverished regimes and manipulate its neighbors' domestic politics as responsible, and China is not alone in its opinion. As the United States and Japan call for a hard line against North Korea, much of the world is quietly praising China for refusing to implement coercive and intrusive methods of "diplomacy." Indeed, China is not positioning itself to be a responsible stakeholder in this international system; it is looking to be a leader in a new, fairer, multipolar one.
Still, China's relations with the United States are important, so it spends energy and resources convincing the United States that it is responsible and cooperative power. In his October meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing described his country's role in the international community as "constructive" and stressed that it has "an excellent track record" in maintaining its international commitments. Even if Beijing didn't believe this, Chinese diplomats will keep talking that way, because, if the United States loses faith in their ability to help, Washington may take unilateral measures that would destabilize the peninsula and put Chinese national security at risk. (It takes little to provoke Kim, and, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Chinese don't exactly count on Washington's level-headedness.
Before Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, joins China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, and Russia next month, he needs to accept that Beijing does not see eye to eye with the United States on the North Korea issue. To break this cycle, the United States has to give China something it wants--such as more direct investment in China's poor northeastern region or more high-level meetings between American and Chinese officials. The package could also include assurances about U.S. military and political intentions in the region; it all depends on how important denuclearizing the peninsula truly is to the Bush administration. But only by shifting the balance of interests can the United States expect China to broker a resolution on American terms.
This article was originally published in the December 15, 2006 online version of the New Republic.