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Talks, avoiding any condemnation of the north’s responsibility for precipitat-
ing the second Korean military conflict that year.
As the dust settled from two years of pro-PDRK Chinese policies, the
result was not positive for China. Beijing’s policies had pushed South Korea
away from China and significantly closer to the United States. In South
Korea, people noted the glaring contrast between Beijing’s calm response to
the killing of forty-six South Koreans on the Cheonan and China’s swift de-
mand for a North Korean admission of guilt, assumption of responsibility,
punishment of the guilty, and pledge of nonrepetition after a small clash on
the PRC–North Korean border in which several Chinese were killed.^59 At
the level of policy, Beijing’s protection of Pyongyang challenged what had
previously been conventional wisdom among South Korean foreign policy
specialists—that South Korea needed to avoid being caught in the escalating
US-PRC rivalry by distancing itself from Washington. That thinking did not
disappear with the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong incidents, but South Koreans
increasingly questioned whether Beijing would be an honest broker in
inter-Korean relations. Many South Koreans had assumed that China’s huge
economic relationship with South Korea, far outweighing its economic ties
to North Korea, plus the “strategic partnership” between China and South
Korea agreed to in May 2008, had moved Beijing closer to Seoul, or at least
toward a neutral position between the two Koreas. Beijing’s protection of
North Korea’s provocations in 2010 demolished these beliefs. It became clear
that China would do nothing to undermine its influence with Pyongyang
or the existence of the North Korean state. Many in South Korea now con-
cluded that if South and North Korea confronted one another, China would
not remain neutral but would side with the north. The consequence was a
renewal of South Korea’s desire for a strong military alliance with the United
States.^60
As for the United States, China’s policies cast doubt on China’s willing-
ness to partner with the United States on the critical issue of war and peace
on the Korean peninsula. China’s apparent policy was not to work with the
United States to prevent or punish North Korean resort to military force, but
to protect Pyongyang from pressure in response to its provocations. It was
clear that China’s paramount interest was protecting China’s own narrow
interests, not the broader stability of the Korean peninsula. It would take a
while for Washington to work out a formal strategic response. When that
response was laid out by Obama and Clinton in late 2011, it became known
as the “pivot to Asia.” In a speech to the Australian Parliament in November,
Obama outlined the strategy of pivoting to Asia as the United States extri-
cated itself from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The United States has been,
and always will be a Pacific nation,” the American president declared.^61 In
plain speech: the United States would not allow itself to be hassled out of East
Asia by growing Chinese power. Secretary of State Clinton laid out the new