North Korea’s Evolving Relations With China

It’s no secret that China-North Korea relations are no longer as “close as lips and teeth,” as the famous saying goes. Back in 2011, Victor Cha, the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, proposed a new formula for the relationship – “mutual hostages.” As Cha explained, “Pyongyang needs Beijing to survive. Beijing can’t afford to let Pyongyang collapse. Each may be unhappy with the other, but neither will sever the relationship.”

That’s fundamentally still true today, with the caveat that Pyongyang, at least, is trying to escape the “hostage situation” by seeking new partnerships abroad. In the past six months, North Korea has engaged in unprecedented outreach to a number of regional actors, most notably Russia, but also Japan, ASEAN, and even South Korea and the U.S. (if you consider Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s speech to be a serious plea for détente). To many analysts, this flurry of diplomacy is driven precisely by the chilled relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang.

For its part, Beijing is drawing closer to South Korea and displaying less and less patience with North Korea’s missile launches and nuclear tests. China-North Korea relations got off on the wrong foot under Xi Jinping’s leadership. In February 2013, only a few months after Xi effectively assumed control of China by taking up the mantle of general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (and before he was officially named China’s president), North Korea’s young leader saw fit to conduct his first nuclear test. The timing of the test – not only during a leadership transition for Beijing, but during the Chinese New Year holiday to boot – infuriated Beijing. Afterwards, Chinese analysts began openly debating the wisdom of continuing the current North Korea policy, a clear sign that Chinese leaders were growing frustrated.

The optics of the relationship since Xi came to power have reflected this unease. Xi has yet to visit North Korea, though he has paid a visit to Seoul (a clear break with precedent). Likewise, Kim has not received an invitation to visit China, but is instead expected to make his first official trip abroad to Russia this May for ceremonies commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of the World War II. Xi is also expected to attend, meaning China and North Korea’s top leaders could meet for the first time on Russian soil.

In addition to the lack of a formal bilateral summit, there are other signs that things are amiss. Most notably, in December 2013 Kim executed China’s preferred interlocutor, Jang Song-thaek, with the charges including ominous references to Jang having sold out North Korean to an unnamed “foreign country” that could only have been China. A year later, China didn’t send any top officials to attend ceremonies marking the third anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s death – with some reports suggesting that Chinese officials were not even invited.

But the distance between Pyongyang and Beijing doesn’t fundamentally alter China’s calculations. Beijing still believes that support for North Korea is essential, lest regime collapse send refugees pouring over the border into China and, even more worrisome, ROK and U.S. troops potentially marching over the 38th parallel. Statements from Chinese officials have attempted to underscore the “normal” state of China-North Korea relationship even as all signs indicate a rocky period.

Most importantly, China’s strained ties with its northeastern neighbor have not translated into a shift in China’s position on the North Korean nuclear issue. No matter how weary Beijing is of Pyongyang’s antics, it is still not willing to subscribe to the U.S.-favored approach of ever-tighter sanctions against the Kim regime. Nor will it allow international criticisms of North Korea’s human rights violations to go uncontested, as Beijing’s response to last year’s United Nations report proved. China may not be happy with North Korea, but it sees continuing support for the Kim regime as the lesser of two evils.

That’s why China seized on Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s speech as a sign of a possible way out of its dilemma. In his speech, Kim signaled a commitment to economic reform and to renewed talks with South Korea – two paths Beijing has long urged Pyongyang to take. When Kim went further and offered to halt future nuclear tests in exchange for a similar halt in U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises, China urged Washington to play ball. The U.S. “needs to seize the momentum to listen to the DPRK’s voice and join hands with other pertinent parties to unravel the decades-old predicament,” a Xinhua commentary on January 16 urged. When Washington rejected the offer, China returned to its long-held pattern of blaming the U.S. for the stalemate on the Korean Peninsula – a position that had been previously diluted by stronger Beijing disapproval toward Pyongyang.

The speed with which China did an about face to support North Korea once again indicates that the relationship remains far from broken. To embrace Pyongyang again, Beijing merely needed some plausible reason to claim that Kim Jong-un is trying to play peacemaker, only to have his “olive branch” rejected by the U.S. Kim’s New Year’s speech provided that excuse and sparked a slight thaw in China-North Korea ties. Since Kim’s speech, China has sent embassy officials to celebrate the anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s birth and also announced plans to open an international tourism zone with Russia and North Korea. The thaw will likely continue to build in anticipation of a Xi-Kim meeting later this year – in Moscow if current trends continue or, more ambitiously, during a long-delayed bilateral summit in Beijing or Pyongyang.

It’s often said of the U.S.-China relationship that it can only be so bad, and can only be so good. The idea is that differing political philosophies and national interests will keep the two from ever being true partners, but that the close economic relationship and need for cooperation will also prevent things from falling completely apart. The same constraints, it could be argued, apply to China-North Korea relations. Even though there are serious reservations about the relationship on both sides, the two governments need each other too much to allow a fundamental break to take place.