40 China The EconomistNovember 21st 2020
O
ptimists aboutAmerican relations with China should con-
sider the following scenario. At some point in early 2021, per-
haps as President Joe Biden is sworn into office, hand on Bible,
North Korea sees an incentive in testing a potent new weapon. In a
worst case, that may mean launching one of the monstrous inter-
continental ballistic missiles (icbms) that it unveiled at a parade in
Pyongyang in October. Each may be able to carry enough nuclear
warheads to overwhelm anti-missile defence systems.
The military implications of an icbm test would be bad. The po-
litical fallout would be worse. With its first breath China, North
Korea’s indispensable patron and protector, may condemn the re-
gime in Pyongyang for a reckless act, carried out in defiance of res-
olutions by the unSecurity Council. China may note that it is ob-
liged to enforce un sanctions, hinting at a clampdown on
(currently rampant) Chinese smuggling of oil into North Korea,
and sanctions-busting by North Korea with its exports of coal and
the sale of fishing rights. Alas, in its next breath China would prob-
ably opine that—if North Korea feels a need to test advanced weap-
ons, or simply to attract the world’s attention—America has itself
to blame. For it was America, China would insist, that churlishly
rejected peace offers made by North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un,
during his meetings with Donald Trump in 2018 and 2019. Worse,
should Mr Biden urge China’s president, Xi Jinping, to join Ameri-
ca in imposing crippling new sanctions on North Korea unless it
abandons nuclear weapons, the near-consensus among Chinese
scholars and foreign diplomats in Beijing is that Mr Xi will refuse.
China and America disagree about so much, nowadays, that di-
vergent views of North Korea may seem an afterthought. But seen
from Beijing, this gulf in understanding over Korea is unusually
revealing, and troubling. In essence, Mr Kim’s nuclear ambitions
are a nuisance for China. But in the risk-calculations of Chinese
leaders, the collapse of the grim, impoverished North Korean re-
gime is a far more alarming prospect. It could lead to a rapid, chaot-
ic reunification with South Korea, an advanced democracy and
treaty ally of America which keeps more than 20,000 troops there.
Still more cynically, as an Asian diplomat puts it, China does not
think that it is the target of North Korea’s nukes.
Chinese officials stress the generosity of North Korea’s movestoreducetensionssincethecrisisoflate 2017 and early 2018. That
flare-up involved repeated missile tests and nuclear blasts by the
Kim regime, prompting Mr Trump first to threaten to rain “fire and
fury” on North Korea, and then to pivot abruptly to an approach
based on personal diplomacy with Mr Kim. China notes that North
Korea returned the remains of long-lost American servicemen, de-
stroyed some nuclear test facilities and that it has refrained from
testing long-range missiles and nuclear devices since 2018.
No matter that American officials call North Korea’s offers in-
adequate. China blames America for a diplomatic stalemate since
the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi ended without a deal in February- This is more than a talking point, insists Li Nan, a researcher
at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government research
institute. Chinese leaders “really believe that because of cold-war
thinking, the usnever trusted North Korea to give up its nuclear
weapons,” so never dropped any sanctions in response to North
Korean concessions, he says. Before fears of covid-19 prompted
North Korea to seal its borders, Mr Li was a frequent, well-connect-
ed visitor to Pyongyang. He is pessimistic about substantive Sino-
American co-operation during any fresh Korean crisis. “America
can’t make concessions to North Korea, and China can’t put more
pressure on North Korea,” is his blunt assessment.
Hardline Chinese nationalists see a conspiracy in America’s re-
jection of North Korean demands. These include dropping sanc-
tions and ending American military exercises with South Korea
that Mr Trump calls expensive and provocative, and has suspend-
ed. Some Chinese scholars write that their country must face the
reality of a nuclear-armed North Korea and balance its geopolitical
interests accordingly, says Zhao Tong, a disarmament expert at the
Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy in Beijing. To such
scholars, progress towards peace is blocked by America’s refusal to
offer North Korea economic and security incentives. Their expla-
nation is that America does not want to leave the peninsula “be-
cause the long-term usgoal is to contain China,” reports Mr Zhao.
American experts on Korea are just as sceptical about China’s
motives. Jung Pak is a former ciaanalyst in Mr Biden’s transition
team. Expressing her own views rather than the next administra-
tion’s, she writes in a forthcoming paper for the East Asia Institute,
a Seoul-based think-tank, that China sees chances to advance its
goal of regional dominance in deadlocked American talks with
North Korea. It sees similar potential gains from America’s dis-
putes with the South (Mr Trump told it to pay five times more to-
wards the cost of American garrisons). China’s assertiveness may
“embolden, not rein in, Kim Jong Un”, worries Ms Pak.
Pausing tests: useful but not the same as denuclearisation
Until June this year, Markus Garlauskas was America’s national in-
telligence officer for North Korea. “We have reached a natural limit
in terms of what we can get out of China on North Korea,” says Mr
Garlauskas, now with the Atlantic Council, a think-tank. Pressing
North Korea to stop testing its most dangerous weapons is proba-
bly the most that China will do, he suggests by telephone from
Washington. A moratorium on tests is not nothing: a new model of
icbmis not credible until it has flown. But pausing tests alone is a
thin basis for co-operation with China.
North Korea will provoke America’s next president, triggering
domestic headaches for Mr Biden as Republicans call him weak on
China and North Korea, which they surely will (forgetting Mr
Trump’s talk of love letters from Mr Kim). That crisis will in turn
test America’s ties with China. The results will not be cheering. 7Chaguan No more love letters
A fresh crisis over North Korea will reveal the limits of China’s willingness to co-operate with America