540 { China’s Quest
resolution after adding modifications that lessened somewhat the stringency
directed at Pyongyang.^28 For the first year of the crisis, Beijing did not play an
active role. But a major shift in China’s position came in March 1994 (as the
confrontation over MFN linkage was peaking), when Beijing finally agreed to
bring the North Korean nuclear issue before the UN Security Council. Once
the issue was before the Security Council, Beijing vetted and then endorsed a
US draft resolution criticizing Pyongyang. In negotiations over the text of the
resolution, Beijing opposed even an implicit threat of sanctions, but agreed
eventually to compromise language (suggested by New Zealand) that “fur-
ther Security Council consideration will take place if necessary.” The United
States–sponsored resolution thus left the Security Council with unanimous,
i.e. China’s, support. As tension escalated during the summer of 1994, China
agreed to pass a message from the United States to Pyongyang calling for
negotiations about the normalization of US–North Korean relations. Chinese
representatives also actively proposed solutions for defusing the mounting
tension. Beijing repeatedly but quietly nudged North Korea to fulfill its NPT
commitments. When the Agreed Framework was worked out in October
1994, it had China’s support. China had become a “smiling dragon,” in the
words of one US official.^29
Beijing’s underlying strategic interest in Korea during the 1993–1994 crisis
was in preventing a war that would disrupt China’s development push and
might lead to collapse of the North Korean regime. North Korean collapse
would confront Beijing with two bad choices: allowing Korean unification,
or intervening to prevent that outcome and thus risking a confrontation
with South Korea and the United States. North Korean acquisition of nuclear
weapons might also push Japan and/or South Korea to follow suit. But Beijing
also seized on nonproliferation to remind Washington that China’s cooper-
ation was important for successful US management of international issues.
This underlined for US leaders the political costs to the United States if bi-
lateral relations soured as a result of revocation of MFN.Strategic Partnership with Russia: A “Far Eastern Rapallo”Formation of a strategic partnership with the new Russian Federation was a
major element of Beijing’s response to the “extremely unbalanced” interna-
tional system that emerged after the Cold War. The initial impulse toward
that Sino-Russian partnership was the same that had inspired the Sino-Soviet
rapprochement of May 1989. Both Beijing and Moscow wanted to focus on
domestic issues with minimum international distractions. Each viewed eco-
nomic cooperation with the other as useful. But some entirely new geostrate-
gic calculations also entered Beijing’s calculus, first and foremost preventing
newly democratic Russia from moving into alignment with the West.