And in response I offer this intriguing little article I found on A19 of the Washington Post this morning, which seems to confirm that China would eventually recognize that Kim Jong Il was dragging Bejing down a path which was not in their national interest:
As Talks Begin, China Views North Korea as Risk
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 27, 2003; Page A19
BEIJING, Aug. 27 (Wednesday) -- In the six-nation talks that began here today on the emerging nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula, a key dynamic will be the one between China and North Korea.
China's government once saw North Korea as a strategic buffer and a friendly communist economy. But Beijing increasingly views Pyongyang and its apparent desire to develop a nuclear weapon as a risk, and officials have all but pleaded with the government of Kim Jong Il to begin reforming the country's moribund economy.
Whereas the Chinese once looked at North Korea and saw themselves in the mirror, now businessmen and scholars traveling to North Korea say they feel they have entered a time machine and been transported back to the China of the 1960s.
"We used to say we were as close to our North Korean brothers as lips and teeth," said Cui Xiaodong, a Beijing trader who routinely spends months at a time in a hotel in Pyongyang. "But now it's like those people are living on the moon."
China and North Korea are still technically allies. China lost 1 million men while fighting for the North in the Korean War. But decades of economic reforms in China and exposure to unprecedented freedoms and Western ideas have turned Chinese society away from the hard-line Stalinism still pursued by North Korea.
Although China initially appeared to ignore the crisis, sparked by North Korea's announcement in October that it had a nuclear program, it began to take a more active role this year, starting with Deputy Premier Qian Qichen's trip to Pyongyang in February.
Following the collapse of talks involving the United States, North Korea and China in April, Beijing redoubled its efforts, resulting in the three days of meetings scheduled this week among diplomats from South Korea, Russia and Japan, as well as North Korea, China and the United States.
No one expects immediate success. Wang Yi, a vice foreign minister who has been the point man for the talks, told China's state-run media Tuesday that he expected the talks would be difficult.
"The nuclear issue is very complicated and acute, and it is impossible to solve all problems through one or two discussions. Moreover, other issues may arise during negotiations," Wang said in an interview on state-run TV.
Government-backed scholars in Beijing now speak of regime change in North Korea in hopeful terms. The People's Liberation Army, once a staunch ally of the mercurial Kim family, which has run North Korea for more than five decades, now has elaborate plans to deal with the country in case of its collapse, Chinese military sources said.
Some Chinese academics have started arguing that North Korea's disappearance would actually not be harmful to China's long-term interests. In one unpublished paper, a specialist on Chinese security, Shi Yinhong, wrote that China could benefit in the long term from North Korea's collapse. South Korea, which would take over, would naturally gravitate toward Beijing and away from Japan and the United States, he wrote. U.S. troops would leave the peninsula and China's influence over northeast Asia would rise.
In reports on the North, Chinese officials and scholars have described a bizarre country where no common citizens talked to them and where signs of the sacrifice made by China's troops 50 years ago were wiped from official memory.
One leading academic, who returned last week from North Korea and shared his report on condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a desperate country full of people too afraid to talk with, or even have their pictures taken by, a foreigner. One evening, the academic shook free of what he called his ubiquitous government "shepherd" and went to look for normal life in Pyongyang.
"I went to the national library," he wrote. "I walked close to a girl who was reading an English book. The pages resembled toilet paper from China 30 years ago. I was deeply moved by her diligence so I greeted her in English. She pretended not to hear me."
The academic and other Chinese guests were taken to Panmunjom, the site of the cease-fire that ended the Korean War. Among the signatories that day was Peng Dehuai, the commander of Chinese forces in North Korea.
At Panmunjom, the Chinese group asked to visit a small museum on the war.
"There were many pictures, documents and real objects of the war led by the ever victorious Gen. Kim Il Sung," the academic wrote. "However, we found nothing about the Chinese volunteer soldiers or Gen. Peng Dehuai."
The only bright spot in his trip, the academic wrote, was a change in North Korean thinking. "Thoughts of earning money have found their way deep into the hearts of the North Korean people," he wrote.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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And of course the Chinese see themselves playing the point men in the economic rehabilitation of N. Korea...
Strangely, that might see N. Korea recognizing that reapproachment with the US and S. Korea is their only hope to fend off China..
And I found the recent Russian naval "exercises" extremely interesting, as well... It would seem that all nations recognize that Bush wasn't going to be goaded into bi-lateral relations. It sent a message that Bush wouldn't be responsible for the repercussions that might arise to China and Russia's economy and borders, should they not assist in bringing Kim Jong Il to heel..
But there are lots of eggs thrown up in the air right now, which is exactly what should happening.. The key is to insure that we catch them all without breaking any..
A bi-lateral approach would have only returned everyone back to the previous, precarious, status quo.. Sure, it's a "crisis" but isn't the Chinese symbol for that word equally defined as both danger and opportunity?
Hawk |
