Trigger Warnings: Looking for Fissures in China-North Korea Relations

When it comes to consequential methods of pressuring North Korea, the daily dump from Donald Trump’s Twitter account pales in comparison to the actions taken along the Chinese border with the DPRK.

North Korean diplomats and leaders are not on pins and needles waiting for the next tweet – they already know what Trump’s playbook will be, and are instead watching Beijing for signs of change, and keeping an eye on the border with China. Trump may very well believe the borderline sycophantic analysis that suggests otherwise, but this U.S. president has limited means with which to alter the strategic balance with North Korea. Ordering a Nixon-style troop withdrawal from South Korea or provoking a second Korean War by means of a preemptive strike on Pyongyang do not appear to be serious options.

By contrast, Chinese President Xi Jinping may be frustrated with Kim Jong-un, but China’s relatively abundant ties with North Korea and the anchors of trading posts up and down their shared frontier mean that Xi holds a stronger hand than Trump. Kim Jong-un knows this – and he also knows what is good for him.

North Korea’s leader is surely more attuned to changes in Beijing’s posture and more busy watching the country’s balance sheet with China than he is worried about an American strike, the timing of which is immaterial, since his entire society is predicated upon the idea that the United States could strike at anytime. In the North Korean view of history, Trump is not some aberration, a riddle to be solved, a yin to Obama’s yang – he is functionally the reincarnation of Harry Truman, the president who bombed North Korea remorselessly, took no options off the table, and threatened the country with nuclear devastation.

What would cause consternation in Pyongyang is a fundamental shift to the Communist Party of China’s approach to North Korea. This includes an expansion of the parameters of North Korea discussions in China’s heavily controlled public square. Trump’s cultivation of the perception that, in spring 2017, he was “making a deal” with Xi to push the North Korean leadership into new realms of pain, at least, leans precisely on this pre-existing Sino-North Korean fault line. Indeed, perceptions of Chinese bullying have a long and storied past in the viewpoint of the North Korean leadership.

But Trump’s attempts to cultivate a Sino-North Korean split are likely to stumble, not because the U.S. president has done a shoddy job with his diplomatic or national security council appointments, or because he is Don Quixote preoccupied with forestalling a “deep state” coup against him, but instead precisely due to historical baggage that is the legacy of his office. It is simply very hard to get the Chinese to do what Washington wants them to do with regard to the North Koreans. Xi and his comrades are going to take whatever steps they deem prudent both against and with North Korea, and the United States is bound to be unsatisfied with the process and the results.

What has the CPC done, then, since Trump came to office? If the Chinese really were turning the screws on North Korea, how would we know? And is the relationship heading for a split, or is it simply in the process of finding a new equilibrium?

Signs of Discomfort on Both Sides

This past spring China signed off on on new United Nations sanctions on North Korean entities, tightened customs enforcement along the border, and mobilized its troops in the border region. Customs and border enforcement has been the subject of dozens of local state media posts, marking more stringent work in Jilin (province-wide), the Changchun airport, and the Dandong airport, among others. If U.S. intelligence agencies are monitoring these open sources, they will see an uptick in such reports along the border. Chinese border troop mobilizations are far harder to grasp (are they real events, or just rumors?), but state media has been covering border guard emergency readiness exercises in Jilin province more vigorously than usual.

These actions have generated a few rare public dust-ups between the North Korean state press and Chinese media outlets. Chinese threats have included a stop in the flow of oil into North Korea, and the possibility of stopping the influx of North Korean workers into China. None of these things can be attributed directly to Trump, but they are important occurrences in the bilateral Chinese-North Korean relationship, which do not portend positively for Pyongyang.

I spent three weeks in China in April (mainly in the border regions with North Korea, but also Beijing). During my travels, I collected and read somewhere over 100 pieces of analysis on the subject of Chinese ties with North Korea, ranging from scholarly articles to magazines, national newspapers, grimy tabloids, and local papers. I also had conversations with a number of Chinese customs officials and border guards, none of which were undertaken in ideal circumstances but which were nevertheless illuminating in their own ways, confirming that relations were tense and that the PLA border guards were on high alert.

Evidence of Chinese discomfort, if not outrage, at North Korea was not difficult to find. The murder of Kim Jong-nam, half-brother to North Korea’s ruler, was handled relatively discreetly in Chinese state media; many stories did not use his name, nor was Kim Jong-un ever explicitly fingered as the key mover behind his brother’s death. This strange disconnection from the global discourse on the murder was marvelled at by Dan Renping (probably a composite pen name) in Huanqiu Shibao on February 16, even as the writer nebulously noted the hopes of the masses that “the truth [about the case] would eventually come to light.” Some writers were able to cut to the chase and discuss why Kim Jong-nam’s death was bad for China’s national interest, but these were the exception to the rule, indicating again the high sensitivity in Chinese reporting and commentary on anything relating to the Kim family and the Macau connection.

North Korean displeasure with China is typically not stated very explicitly, but there were multiple examples that followed the debacle in Malaysia. The North Korean Hwasong-12 missile launch a few short hours before Xi's major Belt and Road speech ought to be Exhibit A for early 2017. This was followed immediately by an unusual news conference at the DPRK Embassy in Beijing at which the ambassador asserted that missile tests would continue. The Chinese media suppressed any reports about the news conference near Ritan Park, but it could not halt reports of the North Korean launch from swirling around Xi’s speech.

A far more overt statement of North Korean anger at China was clearly signalled via the three anti-Chinese KCNA signed commentaries since the new year. Named "Jong Phil" (righteous pen), the North Korean essayist has penned three pieces complaining about U.S.-China coordination on the North Korean nuclear issue, with the latest appearing on May 3. All three of these essays deserve attention both collectively and individually.

The Chinese version of the editorial produced by the North Koreans was significantly more cutting than the English version, with China’s methods being described as vulgar and contemptible. In the editorial, China does not “often claim to be a friendly neighbor,” it ceaselessly praises itself as a friendly neighbor; China's behavior toward North Korea sanctions enforcement is not “unhesitating,” it is unscrupulous; China's attitude toward “bringing down the social system of the DPRK” differs only on small points from the United States’; and China does not simply “dance to the tune of the U.S.” but itself does not have a definite viewpoint on politics. Given the sensitivity of relations with China, it seems reasonable to assume that the essays were put together with some involvement of the DPRK Foreign Ministry and looked over by propaganda director Kim Ki-nam (or possibly Kim Jong-un himself) prior to being released.

The North Koreans were responding to specific statements in the Chinese press. One, like the oil cut-off threat, was published on April 12 in Huanqiu Shibao; another had been stated while U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was in South Korea.

The Status Quo Prevails 

Even amid the blows and counterblows of the spring, it is important to recognize that there are still a number of important lines of cooperation between the two countries that have not been touched. These include DPRK laborers in China, Chinese companies in the DPRK, and the overall Chinese censorship that prevails with respect to North Korea. There were even occasional positive editorials in Chinese media outlets assessing the anti-American successes of Kim Jong-un's strategy. Things could be much worse on the Chinese side; Beijing is still exercising strategic restraint in its media perceptions of North Korea, and scholarly writings and speeches about North Korea, with a few prominent exceptions.

China is not overtly supporting regime change, nor does it seem to have much desire to see that occur. There appears to be an awful lot of wishful thinking at the moment (including on the editorial pages of several prominent U.S. newspapers) about China's willingness to dispense with the Kim family, but this type of arrangement is being proposed about five or six years too late. China had maximum leverage with North Korea in 2010 and 2011, when Kim Jong-il was still alive, and the Communist Party of China chose to endorse the succession of an unproven and almost entirely unknown man in his mid-to-late 20s, with the understanding that he would be surrounded by some more experienced generals and technocrats like his uncle Jang Song-thaek.

Since then, the generals have been purged and the uncle killed, and the CPC may be regretting its choice – but the deal has been done. Just as Xi's hero Mao Zedong rejected the idea of a North Korean government in exile when it was proposed to him by Stalin in the dark days of October 1950, it seems radically unlikely that China would approve of absorbing a North Korean court in exile, as suggested by numerous commentators. Kim Jong-un and whatever sub-set of the vaguely defined "North Korean elite" (does this include all two million residents of Pyongyang?) are not made of the hearty stuff of their predecessors who trekked to Manchuria in the 1930s and 1950s, nor are they going to cede their socialist project to South Korean management while they gamble away their days in Beijing or Macao.

Naturally, if North Korea engages in a sixth nuclear test, rhetoric between Beijing and Pyongyang could tilt again into a mutually angry phase. It may be that the two countries are coming around to a more “normal” relationship as China has indicated it is wont to do – moving beyond the old Party-Party fraternal socialist framework where national interests are more bluntly stated – which also means that complaints can be more public.

But in the meantime, business – such as it is – will continue in the border region, China will not cut off tourism to North Korea, and Chinese businesses in Pyongyang will stick with their ambassador to try to make a buck.

Amid and after all of the thrilling incoherence of Trump and the bilateral state media flame wars of the spring, it seems that China’s relationship with North Korea will endure.