China’s Korea Policy in the Era of Reform, 1978-1992, Chapter II,
The Obstacles to Two-Koreas Policy in the 1980s
Although the Chinese leadership in the post-Mao era emphasise modernisation, China’s foreign relations are not only dictated by economic consideration, but also strategic one. China has always searched for security. As Foreign Minister Huang Hua addressed the UN General Assembly in October 1982:
"The people of all countries eagerly desire peace. China’s modernisation programme can be realised only in an international environment of enduring peace and stability. In the common interests of the people of the world, we are ready to work together with all peace-loving countries and peoples for the maintenance of world peace and international security and for the advancement of the cause of human progress."[1]
From Huang’s statement, it is clear that peace and stability are indispensable for China’s economic development. This chapter will show that the strategic and political significance of North Korea in the Sino-Soviet conflict and the Tiananmen incident made China think that antagonising North Korea could destroy China’s security and thus interrupt its modernisation. Therefore, China decided not to expand its economic relations with South Korea to political and diplomatic ones in the 1980s.
North Korea’s strategic significance in the Sino-Soviet conflict
It has been known that the Korean peninsula has been regarded by the Chinese as a valuable “outer fence”.[2] Geographically, China shares a 600 mile long border with the Korean Peninsula in its resource-rich Northeastern provinces. The western part of the Korean Peninsula is not very far away from China’s Shandong and Liaodong Peninsulas. Tianjin, a gateway to the Chinese capital city, Beijing, is just across the Bohai from Korea. Thus, the Korean Peninsula is strategically important for China and the occupation of Korea by any foreign power cannot be tolerated.[3] Before the end of the Second World War, the ambitious country trying to dominate Korea was Japan. The Ming China in 1592 and 1597 sent troops to defend Korea against the Japanese. In the late 19th century, Japan’s desire to expand its power to Korea led to the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894 in which China was defeated. After that, Japan used Korea as a gateway to invade continental Asia. It annexed Korea in 1910 and invaded Manchuria and the China Proper in 1931 and 1937 respectively. During the Cold War, the United States became China’s thorn. In 1950, when the U.S.-led troops crossed the 38th parallel and moved to China’s border, Mao Zedong abandoned his plan to invade Taiwan and dispatched 1.2 million Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) to protect North Korea against the United States. However, with the Sino-American rapprochement and normalisation, the country which might use the Korean peninsula to challenge China’s security in the 1970s and 1980s was not the United States but China’s former alliance, the Soviet Union.
The Sino-Soviet conflict which began in the late 1950s reached a peak in the late 1960s and lasted until the end of the 1980s. The Soviet military buildup along Chinese borders increased after Leonid Brezhnev came to power in 1964. The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the announcement of the “Brezhnev Doctrine” which declared the Soviet Union’s right to intervene in the internal affairs of other Communist states deemed deviants from the Socialist cause made China fear that it would be the next target of Soviet invasion.[4] The border disputes became bloodshed in Xinjiang and along the Ussuri River in 1969. In the 1970s, the strengthening of the Soviet relations with India and Vietnam, the Soviet support of the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made China feel that it was being encircled by the Soviet Union. By the early 1980s, the Soviet Union had a formidable array of military forces in Northeast Asia including some 35-40% of its ICBM force and ballistic missile submarines, 25% of its ground forces and fighter aircraft, and more than 30% of its strategic bombers and navy forces.[5] The deterioration of the Sino-Soviet relations was reflected in China’s refusal in 1980 to renew the 1950 Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. In addition, China was the only Communist state that did not send an official party delegation to the 70th anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1987.[6] The rift with the Soviets made the Chinese concerned about their own security, especially at the time when the Sino-North Korean relations were not very well.
The rift between Beijing and Pyongyang began during the Cultural Revolution when Chinese Red
Guards attacked Kim Il Sung and labelled him a “fat revisionist”.[7] Although the relations had been improved after Zhou Enlai’s 1970 visit to Pyongyang to apologise for past misdeeds, the Sino-American rapprochement soured the relations again. When Kim Il Sung, during his state visit to China in April 1975, inspired by North Vietnam successful effort at reunification, asked Mao Zedong to help that over South Korea, Mao refused and told Kim that he should wait and do it when the Third World War occurred.[8] Antagonised by China’s accommodation with the Americans, North Korea began to make an overture to the Soviet Union.
The Soviet-North Korean relations were improved in the early 1980s. The Korean Airlines incident and the Rangoon bombing in 1983 provided opportunities for the two countries to get closer. Pyongyang endorsed Moscow’s explanation when the KAL airliner was shot down and the latter published the former’s defense of its position and ignored the official Burmese account of the bombing.[9] In May 1984, Kim Il Sung, for the first time in 23 years, visited the Soviet Union. Militarily, North Korea obtained 36 MiG 23 fighters, 30 SAM-3 missiles, 47 M-2 helicopter gunships and dozens of MiG 29s from the Soviet Union.[10] In addition, the two countries agreed to hold joint military exercises in the Sea of Japan and the Soviets acquired the right to fly through North Korean airspace in their missions to and from Vietnam.[11] Economically, due to an extensive aid package as a result of Kim’s visit, North Korea’s imports from the Soviet Union rose from $471 million in 1984 to $1.9 billion in 1988.[12] On Liberation Day in 1984, Kim Il Sung, for the first time in many years, praised the “liberating role played by the Soviet Union”.[13] In April 1985, the two countries signed a new border treaty which gave better access to each other’s territory, economically and militarily. In August of that year, Kim Il Sung invited Soviet First Deputy Premier Geydar Aliyev to attend the celebration of the 40th anniversary of Korea’s Liberation. It is worth noting that Pyongyang did not invite the Chinese.[14] In short, it is clear that North Korea in the 1980s tilted toward the Soviet Union.
The improvement of Soviet-North Korean relations concerned the Chinese who feared that the
Soviet Union might use North Korea as a base to challenge their security. A senior American diplomat in Beijing observed in 1984 that when Kim Il Sung announced his trip to the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries, the Chinese were “scared to death”.[15] The Soviet access to North Korean airspace threatened not only the Manchurian industrial sector but also the Bohai Gulf, the Yellow Sea shipping lanes and the Northern fleet headquarters at Qingdao.[16] “North Korea is the critical link for Moscow to complete its chain of encirclement of China. A Second Vietnam in the Korean peninsula would give the Kremlin a crucial knife pointing at the heartland of China’s industry and resources”, says Hao Yufan.[17] Therefore, China from the late 1970s to the 1980s tried to improve the relations with North Korea in order to maintain its military security. North Korea’s strategic significance made China’s normalisation with South Korea impossible. Antagonising Kim Il Sung by establishing diplomatic relations with South Korea could further strengthen his close ties with the Soviet Union and thus affected China’s search for peace during its modernisation.
China’s policy toward North Korea in the 1980s
In order to counterbalance the Soviet influence, the Chinese employed several methods in their dealings with North Korea. Senior Chinese leaders paid frequent visits to North Korea. They included Deng Xiaoping in 1982, Hu Yaobang in 1982, 1984, and 1985, Yang Shangkun in 1984 and 1988, Li Xiannian in 1980 and 1986, Zhao Ziyang in 1981 and 1989, and Li Peng in 1985. The erection of a 3.5-metre high bronze statue of Kim Il Sung at his alma mater in China’s Jilin province in October 1986 pleased Kim immensely.[18] In addition, it reaffirmed its treaty obligations and made use of its participation in the Korean War to reinforce its ties with North Korea. For instance, in October 1980, on the 30th anniversary of China’s entry to the Korean War, PLA chief of the general staff Yang Dezhi reaffirmed China’s North Korean security commitment. [19] On the 20th anniversary of the Sino-North Korean Treaty in 1981, Hu Yaobang, Yang Shangkun, and Zhao Ziyang noted the important role of the treaty in strengthening the cooperative relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang and guaranteeing peace in Asia and the world for twenty years pledged to solidify their “great unity” with North Korea.[20] Meanwhile, it is known that Beijing in the early 1980s provided Pyongyang with forty MiG-21 fighter planes.[21] Also, China approved Kim Il Sung’s reunification plan, unveiled in October 1980, to establish a Koryo Confederal Democratic Republic based on equal representation. In his speech at the rally during his visit to Pyongyang in 1981, Zhao Ziyang stated:
"The Party, Government and the people of China are at all times concerned with the Korean people’s sacred cause of independent and peaceful reunification of their fatherland. They resolutely support the correct guidelines and principled stand of the Korean Workers’ Party and the Korean Government and strongly condemn the policy of ‘two Koreas’ pursued by the United States and the south Korean authorities. … The Chinese Government and people will, as always, unswervingly support the Korean Government and people in their just struggle to oppose foreign intervention and achieve the independent and peaceful reunification of their fatherland till final victory."[22]
Furthermore, China assured North Korea that its economic relations with South Korea would not lead to diplomatic ones. Shortly after the hijack incident, Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian flew to North Korea in on May 20, 1983 to inform Kim Il Sung that China would not practice a two-Korea policy and would honour the Sino-North Korean traditional friendship and alliance.[23] During his visit to Pyongyang in 1988, Chinese President Yang Shangkun assured Kim Il Sung that China’s participation in the Seoul Olympic Games did not signal the onset of Chinese diplomatic relations with South Korea.[24] It must be noted that sometimes pressure from North Korea affected China’s economic relations with South Korea. For example, when pressed by Pyongyang on the surging Sino-South Korean trade relationship in 1980-1981, Beijing issued strict trade regulations that caused the trade to decline briefly but significantly in 1982-1983.[25] In 1986, China yielded to North Korea’s protest again by suspending the construction of the first Sino-South Korean joint venture for a year.[26]
Apart from assuring Kim Il Sung of China’s security commitment, China also respected Kim Il Sung’s designation of Kim Jong Il as his successor because a smooth political succession in North Korea was vital to China’s security. In the early 1980s, Kim Il Sung was reaching his seventies. If he died during the Sino-Soviet conflict and his successor lacked internal and external support, there might be a power struggle in Pyongyang which could be exploited by the Soviet Union and brought North Korea to the Soviet orbit. It must be noted that in the early 1980s, the Soviet Union seemed to be positioning itself to exploit internal divisions within the North Korean leadership.[27] Therefore, China should support Kim Il Sung’s wishes. In their visit to North Korea in 1982, Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang expressed their willingness to recognise Kim Jong Il’s political position.[28] In June 1983, Kim Jong Il visited China and met with most members of the CCP’s Political Bureau and Secretariat. Hu Yaobang was Kim’s host during his tour of Qingdao and Nanjing, and Hu Qili guided Kim to Shanghai and Hangzhou.[29] This event indicated that Kim Jong Il gained China’s support for political succession.
For China, North Korea’s economic stability was not less important than political one. From the late 1970s, due to its heavy military budget, North Korea’s economy was so stagnant that it repeatedly asked Beijing for financial assistance.[30] China feared that economic problems in North Korea might increase Pyongyang’s financial dependence on Moscow or lead to political instability, both of which would affect China’s search for peace and security in the era of reform. As a result, China gave economic assistance to North Korea. Shortly after Hua Guofeng’s visit to North Korea in 1978, China agreed to increase its annual oil export to Pyongyang to one million metric tons but to sustain the cut-rate friendship price ($4.50 a barrel) and sent engineers and technicians to North Korea to construct oil refineries, petrochemical plants, and other related industries.[31] In January 1985, the two countries signed another agreement on economic assistance and cooperation. Also, a large-scale nuclear reactor for research was reported to be under construction in Yongbyon with Chinese help.[32] Moreover, China repeatedly suggested that North Korea should institute economic reform. During Kim Il Sung’s visit to China in 1982, Deng Xiaoping took him to Chengdu to see China’s model of development. Although Deng did not say that North Korea should emulate Chengdu, his words implied his intention. Deng told Kim:
"We must concentrate on economic development. In a country as big and as poor as ours, if we don’t try to increase production, how can we survive? How is socialism superior, when our people have so many difficulties in their lives?... at the first stage of communism, … we must do all we can to develop the productive forces and gradually eliminate poverty, constantly raising the people’s living standards. Otherwise, how will socialism be able to triumph over capitalism?"[33]
When Kim Jong Il visited China in 1983, the Chinese sent him the same message given to his father by inviting him to inspect model plants and enterprises set up with foreign investment. When Kim Il Sung visited China again in 1987, Deng invited him to visit Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, the showcase of his reform programme.
For China, however, counterbalancing the Soviet ascendancy in North Korea was not a sole way to maintain its security. China was concerned that Pyongyang’s aggression (e.g. the 1983 Rangoon bombing, and the 1987 bombing of KAL flight 858 over the border between Thailand and Burma) might lead to an instability in the Korean Peninsula. In addition, it feared that a rise in Reagan’s military budget since the early 1980s would be responsible for North Korea’s call for the increase of Soviet military assistance, affecting China’s strategic security in the Sino-Soviet conflict and, perhaps, bringing North Korea, and also China which had an obligation to defend North Korea according to the 1961 Treaty of Alliance, to the military confrontation with South Korea and the United States.[34] Although China repeatedly reaffirmed its security commitment to North Korea, in fact it was not ready to help North Korea if the war broke out. Statements made by the Chinese leadership implied that it would help Pyongyang only in the case that North Korea was attacked by others. “Should any country invade the northern part of Korea, we will, as we have stated, go all out to help you defeat the invader”, says Hu Yaobang in his interview with a Nadong Sinmun delegation in 1984.[35] The more explicit statement was made by Zhang Xiangshan, the advisor to the Department of International Liaison of the CCP, during his talk with a visiting delegation of the Japan Socialist Party in the same year. Zhang stated “if the Democratic People’s republic of Korea initiates war against South Korea, we cannot support it”.[36] In 1987, Deng Xiaoping stated that China wanted a peaceful and stable environment in the Korean Peninsula and would not support Pyongyang’s invasion of South Korea.[37] Therefore, in order to maintain peace in the Korean peninsula and continue its economic modernisation, China encouraged North Korea to open a dialogue with the United States and South Korea.
From the late 1970s to the 1980s, China played a role as a mediator between the United States and North Korea. At the end of January 1979, when Deng Xiaoping visited Washington, U.S. President Jimmy Carter asked him to help arrange North-South talks. Deng responded that North Korea was ready to talk to the United States and there was absolutely no danger of a North Korean attack.[38] On September 28, 1983, shortly after his secret meeting between with Kim Il Sung at Dalian, Deng Xiaoping told U.S. Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger that Kim was willing to take a conciliatory posture toward the United States.[39] Ten days later, after informed by North Korea, China told the U.S. embassy in Beijing that North Korea agreed to hold tripartite talks between the United States and the two Koreas.[40] However, the Rangoon bombing in October of that year dampened the prospect of talks. Deng Xiaoping was so furious at Pyongyang for staging the bombing that he refused to see any North Koreans for weeks and the controlled Chinese media gave equal treatment to the North Korean denials and the damning official reports from Rangoon.[41] In December of the same year, China and North Korea resumed the consultations on tripartite talks. Shortly after North Korea’s public announcement of its proposal to hold tripartite talks on January 10, 1984, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed it as a useful proposal to ease tensions in the Korean Peninsula and Premier Zhao Ziyang, during his visit to Washington, supported it in his meeting with President Reagan.[42] Although, due to American and South Korean mistrust of Kim Il Sung and North Korea’s refusal to apologise for the Rangoon bombing, tripartite talks did not happen, China continued its attempt to encourage a dialogue between North Korea and the United States. During Reagan’s visit to China in April 1984, Zhao Ziyang told him that “it is still China’s hope that tripartite talks will be held at an early date.”[43]
In March 1987, when the Reagan administration considered a new policy toward North Korea and permitted the U.S. officials to have contacts with North Korean officials, the Chinese welcomed it and sent Director of the CCP Department of International Liaison Zhu Liang to talk with Kim Il Sung. China argued that the United States and North Korea cannot be expected to solve all complex issues at once, but should adopt a realistic and sincere step-by-step approach to reduce tensions in the Korean peninsula.[44] In fact, China was behind Reagan’s decision. Deng Xiaoping in his meeting with a Japanese political leader on June 4, 1987 made it clear that it was China that asked the United States to contact North Korea.[45] Unfortunately, the bombing of Korean Airline flight 858 from Abu Dhabi to Seoul by North Korean espionage agents in November 1987 brought about the hardening of North Korea’s relations with the United States and South Korea. China’s response to the incident was that it opposed any form of international terrorism.[46] In his speech at a Pyongyang banquet in on April 24, 1989, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang told his North Korean counterpart that the strongest trends in the world were to turn confrontation into dialogue and tension into moderation.[47] In short, it is obvious that China favoured an improvement in U.S.-North Korea relations to avoid tensions and instability in the Korean peninsula which might affect China’s security and economic development.
China’s concerns about North Korea’s strategic significance lessened after the Sino-Soviet rapprochement in the late 1980s. After Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1985, he improved relations with China by overcoming the “three obstacles” which had threatened China’s security: the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Soviet troop deployment along the Sino-Soviet border and in Mongolia, and the Soviet support of Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia.[48] In addition, in order to institute economic reform, he reduced Soviet aids to Pyongyang and favoured economic relations with Seoul which could help develop the Soviet Far East.[49] On May 16, 1989, the historic summit between Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev that normalised the Sino-Soviet relations took place in Beijing. In other words, by May 1989, the Sino-Soviet conflict and their competition over North Korea were a history. Therefore, North Korea’s significance for China’s security decreased markedly and China seemed ready to establish diplomatic relations with South Korea. Unfortunately, the Tiananmen incident that took place few weeks after the Sino-Soviet normalisation increased North Korea’s significance for China’s security again. According to some sources, had there been no Tiananmen incident on June 4, 1989, China would have set up a government office in Seoul in September 1989, and probably will have established diplomatic relations with South Korea sometime in 1990.[50] Thus, it is worth considering the significance of North Korea for China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident, a factor that retarded the Sino-South Korean normalisation until the early 1990s.
Pyongyang’s significance for China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident
The Tiananmen crackdown brought about the fall of a liberal Zhao Ziyang and the return of rigid doctrinism. In the eyes of Chinese leadership, in order to establish national solidarity, political methods would be more effective than economic devices, at least in the short run.[51] Octogenarian leaders who returned to control political agendas after their eclipse during the decade of reform viewed that the Tiananmen protests and the U.S.-led sanctions were part of the United States’ “peaceful evolution” policy aiming to transform China into America’s image by using various methods: military pressure; economic measures; cultural exchange programmes; and the infiltration bourgeois ideas via the electronic and print media.[52] In addition, market-oriented reform was viewed as the root cause of bourgeois liberalisation.[53] Therefore, the collective worldview of Chinese leadership after 1989 was a throwback to the class-based, two-camp struggle between socialist and imperialist systems that was dominant during Mao’s era.[54] As Politburo Standing Committee member Yao Yilin warned at an emergency enlarged Politburo meeting following the Tiananmen massacre:
"We must on no account take the Polish road or the Hungarian road that the American Dulles designed in the 1950s for the gradual transformation of communist countries. Over the past decades, the imperialists have never changed their original design. They came to cooperate with us and express friendship not only for the purpose of making money but also for the purpose of changing the nature of our country and remodelling our country to become a capitalist society."[55]
In addition, the Tiananmen incident was followed by the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. These trends made the Chinese leadership realise that their political system was in danger and that they must bring its political and ideological ties with the remaining Communist countries.[56] As a result, China needed a neighbouring Communist North Korea as an ally to fend off the peaceful evolution. In addition, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States still asserts its hegemony in Northeast Asia by regularly conducting military exercises with South Korea which China sees as a threat to North Korea. As China has considered North Korea as a buffer state, any action threatening Pyongyang indirectly threatens Beijing as well.[57] A Chinese source reported that in 1990 an internal document was issued instructing all government agencies to support North Korea politically and economically.[58]
China’s relations with North Korea became closer in the wake of the Tiananmen incident. Deng Xiaoping appreciated that North Korea was one of the few countries that supported the PLA crackdown on demonstrations. In their meeting in Beijing in December 1989, Deng Xiaoping and Kim Il Sung agreed to preserve the supremacy of their respective communist parties and stressed their firm commitment to the socialist road.[59] In 1990 and 1991, China seized several opportunities to assure North Korea that their friendship would endure many generations. For example, when Kim Il Sung made his thirty-ninth visit to Beijing in October 1991, Renmin Ribao reported:
"The main objective of Chairman Kim Il Sung’s visit is to further strengthen the traditional friendship between the two parties, the two states, and the two peoples. … Regardless of whatever change may take place in the international situation, the friendship between China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will not change, and will remain permanent."[60]
Economically, due to the Soviet withdrawal of economic assistance, China increased its aids to North Korea because it feared that economic problems in Pyongyang might contribute to the collapse of the North Korean regime.[61] When Kim Il Sung in 1991 pleaded for a loan of 35 billion yuan without any political conditions attached and three millions tons of oil per year, Deng promised a delivery of 1.7 tons of oil – about 500,000 tons more than China was supplying to North Korea – and agreed to postpone carrying out financial transactions in hard currencies.[62] Meanwhile, it continued urging North Korea to reform its autarkic economic system. When General Secretary Jiang Zemin met North Korean Premier Yon Hyong Muk at the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in November 1990, he told Yon that Shenzhen’s success proved that China could pursue an open-door economic policy and preserve the socialist road at the same time, suggesting that North Korea should not be afraid to reform its economy and open its doors to the outside world.[63] Moreover, China supported North Korea’s participation in the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Tumen River Area Development Project in 1991.
However, by the beginning of the 1990s, China realised that its return to rigid doctrinism and the strengthening of its relations with North Korea were not enough to cope with the changing international system. Therefore, China under Deng Xiaoping decided to reorient its foreign policy which facilitated the Sino-South Korean normalisation in 1992.
[1]Huang Hua, “China’s Position on Current World Issues – Foreign Minister Huang Hua’s address to UN General Assembly, October 4 ,” Beijing Review, 11 October 1982, 15.
[2]Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 332.
[3]Zhang Xiaoming, “The Korean Peninsula and China’s National Security: Past, Present and Future,” Asian Perspective, no. 3 (1998): 259.
[4]Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 3rd ed., 738.
[5]Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,” Asian Survey 27 (August 1987): 864.
[6]Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 687.
[7]Parris H. Chang, “Beijing’s Policy toward Korea and PRC-ROK Normalization of Relations,” in The Changing Order in Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula, ed. Manwoo Lee and Richard W. Mansbach (Seoul: Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Kyungnam University, 1993), 162.
[8]Parris H. Chang, “China’s East Asian Policy during the Deng Era,” in Peace and Cooperation in Northeast Asia, ed. Dalchoong Kim (Seoul: Institute of East and West Studies, Yonsei University, 1990), 111.
[9]Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,”: 866-867.
[10]Parris H. Chang, “Beijing’s Policy toward Korea and PRC-ROK Normalization of Relations,” , 164.
[11]Ibid.
[12]Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 156.
[13]Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,”: 867.
[14]Ibid.: 867.
[15]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea: dynamic relations (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1996), 81.
[16]Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,”: 868.
[17]Ibid.: 874-875.
[18]Chae-Jin Lee, “China’s Pragmatic Policy Orientation and its Implication for Korean Unification,” in Perspectives on The Peaceful Reunification of Korea, ed. Hong Nack Kim et al. (Seoul: Institute of Korean Studies, 1988), 17.
[19]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 73.
[20]Ibid., 71.
[21]Chu Sung-po, “Peking’s Relations with South and North Korea in the 1980s,” Issues and Studies 22 (November 1986): 74-75.
[22]“Premier Zhao Ziyang Visits Korea,” Beijing Review, 4 January 1982, 5.
[23]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 107.
[24]Ibid., 113.
[25]Jia Hao and Zhang Qubing, “China’s Policy toward the Korean Peninsula,” Asian Survey 32 (December 1992): 1144.
[26]Ibid.
[27] Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,”: 870.
[28]Chu Sung-po, “Peking’s Relations with South and North Korea in the 1980s,”: 75.
[29]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 72.
[30] Chu Sung-po, “Peking’s Relations with South and North Korea in the 1980s,”: 74.
[31]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 135.
[32]Chong Wook Chung, “China’s Role in Two-Koreas Relations in the 1980s,” Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 5 (Fall 1986): 56.
[33]Wei-Wei Zhang, Ideology and Economic Reform under Deng Xiaoping 1978-1993 (London: Kegan Paul International, 1996), 52.
[34]Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,”: 878; and Ilpyong J. Kim, “China and the Two Koreas in the post-Seoul Olympics Era,” Korea Observer 14 (Autumn 1988): 14.
[35]Chae-Jin Lee, “The Role of China in the Korean Unification Process,” Asian Perspective 10 (Spring-Summer 1986): 102.
[36]Ibid.: 102-103.
[37]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 79.
[38]Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 105.
[39]Chae-Jin Lee, “The Role of China in the Korean Unification Process,” : 106.
[40]Ibid.
[41]Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 145.
[42]Chae-Jin Lee, “The Role of China in the Korean Unification Process,” : 106.
[43]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 111.
[44]Chae-Jin Lee, “China’s Pragmatic Policy Orientation and its Implication for Korean Unification,”, 18.
[45]Jae Ho Chung, “South Korea-China Economic Relations: The Current Situation and Its Implications,” Asian Survey 28 (October 1988): 1046.
[46]Ilpyong J. Kim, “China and the Two Koreas in the post-Seoul Olympics Era,” Korea Observer 14 (Autumn 1988): 281.
[47]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 84.
[48]Andrew J. Nathan and Robert S. Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), 49.
[49]Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 203.
[50]Weiqun Gu, “China’s ‘Open-Door’ Policy and the Korean Peninsula,” in Peace and Cooperation in Northeast Asia, 115.
[51]Kim Hakjoon, Korea’s Relations with Her Neighbors in a Changing World, second printing (Seoul: Hollym Corporation, 1993), 525.
[52]David Shambaugh, “Peking’s Foreign Policy Conundrum Since Tienanmen: Peaceful Coexistence vs. Peaceful Evolution,” Issues & Studies 28 (November 1992): 69.
[53] Wei-Wei Zhang, Ideology and Economic Reform under Deng Xiaoping 1978-1993, 180.
[54]David Shambaugh, “Peking’s Foreign Policy Conundrum Since Tienanmen,”: 68-69.
[55]Ibid.: 69.
[56]The impact of Eastern European events on China’s domestic politics is explained in Robert L. Suettinger, Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S.-China Relations 1989-2000 (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 103-107.
[57]Russell Ong, China’s Security Interests in the Post-Cold War Era (London: Curzon, 2002), 58.
[58]Hong Yung Lee, “Future Dynamics in Sino-Korea Relations,” Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 9 (Fall 1990): 34-49, [journal on-line] ; available from http://weblinks1.epnet.com/delivery.asp?tb=0&_ug=dbs+0+In+en-us+sid+... ; accessed 1 April 2003.
[59]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 119.
[60]Cited in Hong Yung Lee, “China and the Two Koreas: New Emerging Triangle,” in Korea and the World: Beyond the Cold War, ed. Young Whan Kihl (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994), 102.
[61]Parris H. Chang, “Beijing’s Policy toward Korea and PRC-ROK Normalization of Relations,” ,167.
[62] Hong Yung Lee, “China and the Two Koreas: New Emerging Triangle,” : 101; and Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 91.
[63]Ibid., 138-139.
The Obstacles to Two-Koreas Policy in the 1980s
Although the Chinese leadership in the post-Mao era emphasise modernisation, China’s foreign relations are not only dictated by economic consideration, but also strategic one. China has always searched for security. As Foreign Minister Huang Hua addressed the UN General Assembly in October 1982:
"The people of all countries eagerly desire peace. China’s modernisation programme can be realised only in an international environment of enduring peace and stability. In the common interests of the people of the world, we are ready to work together with all peace-loving countries and peoples for the maintenance of world peace and international security and for the advancement of the cause of human progress."[1]
From Huang’s statement, it is clear that peace and stability are indispensable for China’s economic development. This chapter will show that the strategic and political significance of North Korea in the Sino-Soviet conflict and the Tiananmen incident made China think that antagonising North Korea could destroy China’s security and thus interrupt its modernisation. Therefore, China decided not to expand its economic relations with South Korea to political and diplomatic ones in the 1980s.
North Korea’s strategic significance in the Sino-Soviet conflict
It has been known that the Korean peninsula has been regarded by the Chinese as a valuable “outer fence”.[2] Geographically, China shares a 600 mile long border with the Korean Peninsula in its resource-rich Northeastern provinces. The western part of the Korean Peninsula is not very far away from China’s Shandong and Liaodong Peninsulas. Tianjin, a gateway to the Chinese capital city, Beijing, is just across the Bohai from Korea. Thus, the Korean Peninsula is strategically important for China and the occupation of Korea by any foreign power cannot be tolerated.[3] Before the end of the Second World War, the ambitious country trying to dominate Korea was Japan. The Ming China in 1592 and 1597 sent troops to defend Korea against the Japanese. In the late 19th century, Japan’s desire to expand its power to Korea led to the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894 in which China was defeated. After that, Japan used Korea as a gateway to invade continental Asia. It annexed Korea in 1910 and invaded Manchuria and the China Proper in 1931 and 1937 respectively. During the Cold War, the United States became China’s thorn. In 1950, when the U.S.-led troops crossed the 38th parallel and moved to China’s border, Mao Zedong abandoned his plan to invade Taiwan and dispatched 1.2 million Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) to protect North Korea against the United States. However, with the Sino-American rapprochement and normalisation, the country which might use the Korean peninsula to challenge China’s security in the 1970s and 1980s was not the United States but China’s former alliance, the Soviet Union.
The Sino-Soviet conflict which began in the late 1950s reached a peak in the late 1960s and lasted until the end of the 1980s. The Soviet military buildup along Chinese borders increased after Leonid Brezhnev came to power in 1964. The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the announcement of the “Brezhnev Doctrine” which declared the Soviet Union’s right to intervene in the internal affairs of other Communist states deemed deviants from the Socialist cause made China fear that it would be the next target of Soviet invasion.[4] The border disputes became bloodshed in Xinjiang and along the Ussuri River in 1969. In the 1970s, the strengthening of the Soviet relations with India and Vietnam, the Soviet support of the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan made China feel that it was being encircled by the Soviet Union. By the early 1980s, the Soviet Union had a formidable array of military forces in Northeast Asia including some 35-40% of its ICBM force and ballistic missile submarines, 25% of its ground forces and fighter aircraft, and more than 30% of its strategic bombers and navy forces.[5] The deterioration of the Sino-Soviet relations was reflected in China’s refusal in 1980 to renew the 1950 Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. In addition, China was the only Communist state that did not send an official party delegation to the 70th anniversary celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1987.[6] The rift with the Soviets made the Chinese concerned about their own security, especially at the time when the Sino-North Korean relations were not very well.
The rift between Beijing and Pyongyang began during the Cultural Revolution when Chinese Red
Guards attacked Kim Il Sung and labelled him a “fat revisionist”.[7] Although the relations had been improved after Zhou Enlai’s 1970 visit to Pyongyang to apologise for past misdeeds, the Sino-American rapprochement soured the relations again. When Kim Il Sung, during his state visit to China in April 1975, inspired by North Vietnam successful effort at reunification, asked Mao Zedong to help that over South Korea, Mao refused and told Kim that he should wait and do it when the Third World War occurred.[8] Antagonised by China’s accommodation with the Americans, North Korea began to make an overture to the Soviet Union.
The Soviet-North Korean relations were improved in the early 1980s. The Korean Airlines incident and the Rangoon bombing in 1983 provided opportunities for the two countries to get closer. Pyongyang endorsed Moscow’s explanation when the KAL airliner was shot down and the latter published the former’s defense of its position and ignored the official Burmese account of the bombing.[9] In May 1984, Kim Il Sung, for the first time in 23 years, visited the Soviet Union. Militarily, North Korea obtained 36 MiG 23 fighters, 30 SAM-3 missiles, 47 M-2 helicopter gunships and dozens of MiG 29s from the Soviet Union.[10] In addition, the two countries agreed to hold joint military exercises in the Sea of Japan and the Soviets acquired the right to fly through North Korean airspace in their missions to and from Vietnam.[11] Economically, due to an extensive aid package as a result of Kim’s visit, North Korea’s imports from the Soviet Union rose from $471 million in 1984 to $1.9 billion in 1988.[12] On Liberation Day in 1984, Kim Il Sung, for the first time in many years, praised the “liberating role played by the Soviet Union”.[13] In April 1985, the two countries signed a new border treaty which gave better access to each other’s territory, economically and militarily. In August of that year, Kim Il Sung invited Soviet First Deputy Premier Geydar Aliyev to attend the celebration of the 40th anniversary of Korea’s Liberation. It is worth noting that Pyongyang did not invite the Chinese.[14] In short, it is clear that North Korea in the 1980s tilted toward the Soviet Union.
The improvement of Soviet-North Korean relations concerned the Chinese who feared that the
Soviet Union might use North Korea as a base to challenge their security. A senior American diplomat in Beijing observed in 1984 that when Kim Il Sung announced his trip to the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries, the Chinese were “scared to death”.[15] The Soviet access to North Korean airspace threatened not only the Manchurian industrial sector but also the Bohai Gulf, the Yellow Sea shipping lanes and the Northern fleet headquarters at Qingdao.[16] “North Korea is the critical link for Moscow to complete its chain of encirclement of China. A Second Vietnam in the Korean peninsula would give the Kremlin a crucial knife pointing at the heartland of China’s industry and resources”, says Hao Yufan.[17] Therefore, China from the late 1970s to the 1980s tried to improve the relations with North Korea in order to maintain its military security. North Korea’s strategic significance made China’s normalisation with South Korea impossible. Antagonising Kim Il Sung by establishing diplomatic relations with South Korea could further strengthen his close ties with the Soviet Union and thus affected China’s search for peace during its modernisation.
China’s policy toward North Korea in the 1980s
In order to counterbalance the Soviet influence, the Chinese employed several methods in their dealings with North Korea. Senior Chinese leaders paid frequent visits to North Korea. They included Deng Xiaoping in 1982, Hu Yaobang in 1982, 1984, and 1985, Yang Shangkun in 1984 and 1988, Li Xiannian in 1980 and 1986, Zhao Ziyang in 1981 and 1989, and Li Peng in 1985. The erection of a 3.5-metre high bronze statue of Kim Il Sung at his alma mater in China’s Jilin province in October 1986 pleased Kim immensely.[18] In addition, it reaffirmed its treaty obligations and made use of its participation in the Korean War to reinforce its ties with North Korea. For instance, in October 1980, on the 30th anniversary of China’s entry to the Korean War, PLA chief of the general staff Yang Dezhi reaffirmed China’s North Korean security commitment. [19] On the 20th anniversary of the Sino-North Korean Treaty in 1981, Hu Yaobang, Yang Shangkun, and Zhao Ziyang noted the important role of the treaty in strengthening the cooperative relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang and guaranteeing peace in Asia and the world for twenty years pledged to solidify their “great unity” with North Korea.[20] Meanwhile, it is known that Beijing in the early 1980s provided Pyongyang with forty MiG-21 fighter planes.[21] Also, China approved Kim Il Sung’s reunification plan, unveiled in October 1980, to establish a Koryo Confederal Democratic Republic based on equal representation. In his speech at the rally during his visit to Pyongyang in 1981, Zhao Ziyang stated:
"The Party, Government and the people of China are at all times concerned with the Korean people’s sacred cause of independent and peaceful reunification of their fatherland. They resolutely support the correct guidelines and principled stand of the Korean Workers’ Party and the Korean Government and strongly condemn the policy of ‘two Koreas’ pursued by the United States and the south Korean authorities. … The Chinese Government and people will, as always, unswervingly support the Korean Government and people in their just struggle to oppose foreign intervention and achieve the independent and peaceful reunification of their fatherland till final victory."[22]
Furthermore, China assured North Korea that its economic relations with South Korea would not lead to diplomatic ones. Shortly after the hijack incident, Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian flew to North Korea in on May 20, 1983 to inform Kim Il Sung that China would not practice a two-Korea policy and would honour the Sino-North Korean traditional friendship and alliance.[23] During his visit to Pyongyang in 1988, Chinese President Yang Shangkun assured Kim Il Sung that China’s participation in the Seoul Olympic Games did not signal the onset of Chinese diplomatic relations with South Korea.[24] It must be noted that sometimes pressure from North Korea affected China’s economic relations with South Korea. For example, when pressed by Pyongyang on the surging Sino-South Korean trade relationship in 1980-1981, Beijing issued strict trade regulations that caused the trade to decline briefly but significantly in 1982-1983.[25] In 1986, China yielded to North Korea’s protest again by suspending the construction of the first Sino-South Korean joint venture for a year.[26]
Apart from assuring Kim Il Sung of China’s security commitment, China also respected Kim Il Sung’s designation of Kim Jong Il as his successor because a smooth political succession in North Korea was vital to China’s security. In the early 1980s, Kim Il Sung was reaching his seventies. If he died during the Sino-Soviet conflict and his successor lacked internal and external support, there might be a power struggle in Pyongyang which could be exploited by the Soviet Union and brought North Korea to the Soviet orbit. It must be noted that in the early 1980s, the Soviet Union seemed to be positioning itself to exploit internal divisions within the North Korean leadership.[27] Therefore, China should support Kim Il Sung’s wishes. In their visit to North Korea in 1982, Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang expressed their willingness to recognise Kim Jong Il’s political position.[28] In June 1983, Kim Jong Il visited China and met with most members of the CCP’s Political Bureau and Secretariat. Hu Yaobang was Kim’s host during his tour of Qingdao and Nanjing, and Hu Qili guided Kim to Shanghai and Hangzhou.[29] This event indicated that Kim Jong Il gained China’s support for political succession.
For China, North Korea’s economic stability was not less important than political one. From the late 1970s, due to its heavy military budget, North Korea’s economy was so stagnant that it repeatedly asked Beijing for financial assistance.[30] China feared that economic problems in North Korea might increase Pyongyang’s financial dependence on Moscow or lead to political instability, both of which would affect China’s search for peace and security in the era of reform. As a result, China gave economic assistance to North Korea. Shortly after Hua Guofeng’s visit to North Korea in 1978, China agreed to increase its annual oil export to Pyongyang to one million metric tons but to sustain the cut-rate friendship price ($4.50 a barrel) and sent engineers and technicians to North Korea to construct oil refineries, petrochemical plants, and other related industries.[31] In January 1985, the two countries signed another agreement on economic assistance and cooperation. Also, a large-scale nuclear reactor for research was reported to be under construction in Yongbyon with Chinese help.[32] Moreover, China repeatedly suggested that North Korea should institute economic reform. During Kim Il Sung’s visit to China in 1982, Deng Xiaoping took him to Chengdu to see China’s model of development. Although Deng did not say that North Korea should emulate Chengdu, his words implied his intention. Deng told Kim:
"We must concentrate on economic development. In a country as big and as poor as ours, if we don’t try to increase production, how can we survive? How is socialism superior, when our people have so many difficulties in their lives?... at the first stage of communism, … we must do all we can to develop the productive forces and gradually eliminate poverty, constantly raising the people’s living standards. Otherwise, how will socialism be able to triumph over capitalism?"[33]
When Kim Jong Il visited China in 1983, the Chinese sent him the same message given to his father by inviting him to inspect model plants and enterprises set up with foreign investment. When Kim Il Sung visited China again in 1987, Deng invited him to visit Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, the showcase of his reform programme.
For China, however, counterbalancing the Soviet ascendancy in North Korea was not a sole way to maintain its security. China was concerned that Pyongyang’s aggression (e.g. the 1983 Rangoon bombing, and the 1987 bombing of KAL flight 858 over the border between Thailand and Burma) might lead to an instability in the Korean Peninsula. In addition, it feared that a rise in Reagan’s military budget since the early 1980s would be responsible for North Korea’s call for the increase of Soviet military assistance, affecting China’s strategic security in the Sino-Soviet conflict and, perhaps, bringing North Korea, and also China which had an obligation to defend North Korea according to the 1961 Treaty of Alliance, to the military confrontation with South Korea and the United States.[34] Although China repeatedly reaffirmed its security commitment to North Korea, in fact it was not ready to help North Korea if the war broke out. Statements made by the Chinese leadership implied that it would help Pyongyang only in the case that North Korea was attacked by others. “Should any country invade the northern part of Korea, we will, as we have stated, go all out to help you defeat the invader”, says Hu Yaobang in his interview with a Nadong Sinmun delegation in 1984.[35] The more explicit statement was made by Zhang Xiangshan, the advisor to the Department of International Liaison of the CCP, during his talk with a visiting delegation of the Japan Socialist Party in the same year. Zhang stated “if the Democratic People’s republic of Korea initiates war against South Korea, we cannot support it”.[36] In 1987, Deng Xiaoping stated that China wanted a peaceful and stable environment in the Korean Peninsula and would not support Pyongyang’s invasion of South Korea.[37] Therefore, in order to maintain peace in the Korean peninsula and continue its economic modernisation, China encouraged North Korea to open a dialogue with the United States and South Korea.
From the late 1970s to the 1980s, China played a role as a mediator between the United States and North Korea. At the end of January 1979, when Deng Xiaoping visited Washington, U.S. President Jimmy Carter asked him to help arrange North-South talks. Deng responded that North Korea was ready to talk to the United States and there was absolutely no danger of a North Korean attack.[38] On September 28, 1983, shortly after his secret meeting between with Kim Il Sung at Dalian, Deng Xiaoping told U.S. Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger that Kim was willing to take a conciliatory posture toward the United States.[39] Ten days later, after informed by North Korea, China told the U.S. embassy in Beijing that North Korea agreed to hold tripartite talks between the United States and the two Koreas.[40] However, the Rangoon bombing in October of that year dampened the prospect of talks. Deng Xiaoping was so furious at Pyongyang for staging the bombing that he refused to see any North Koreans for weeks and the controlled Chinese media gave equal treatment to the North Korean denials and the damning official reports from Rangoon.[41] In December of the same year, China and North Korea resumed the consultations on tripartite talks. Shortly after North Korea’s public announcement of its proposal to hold tripartite talks on January 10, 1984, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed it as a useful proposal to ease tensions in the Korean Peninsula and Premier Zhao Ziyang, during his visit to Washington, supported it in his meeting with President Reagan.[42] Although, due to American and South Korean mistrust of Kim Il Sung and North Korea’s refusal to apologise for the Rangoon bombing, tripartite talks did not happen, China continued its attempt to encourage a dialogue between North Korea and the United States. During Reagan’s visit to China in April 1984, Zhao Ziyang told him that “it is still China’s hope that tripartite talks will be held at an early date.”[43]
In March 1987, when the Reagan administration considered a new policy toward North Korea and permitted the U.S. officials to have contacts with North Korean officials, the Chinese welcomed it and sent Director of the CCP Department of International Liaison Zhu Liang to talk with Kim Il Sung. China argued that the United States and North Korea cannot be expected to solve all complex issues at once, but should adopt a realistic and sincere step-by-step approach to reduce tensions in the Korean peninsula.[44] In fact, China was behind Reagan’s decision. Deng Xiaoping in his meeting with a Japanese political leader on June 4, 1987 made it clear that it was China that asked the United States to contact North Korea.[45] Unfortunately, the bombing of Korean Airline flight 858 from Abu Dhabi to Seoul by North Korean espionage agents in November 1987 brought about the hardening of North Korea’s relations with the United States and South Korea. China’s response to the incident was that it opposed any form of international terrorism.[46] In his speech at a Pyongyang banquet in on April 24, 1989, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang told his North Korean counterpart that the strongest trends in the world were to turn confrontation into dialogue and tension into moderation.[47] In short, it is obvious that China favoured an improvement in U.S.-North Korea relations to avoid tensions and instability in the Korean peninsula which might affect China’s security and economic development.
China’s concerns about North Korea’s strategic significance lessened after the Sino-Soviet rapprochement in the late 1980s. After Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1985, he improved relations with China by overcoming the “three obstacles” which had threatened China’s security: the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Soviet troop deployment along the Sino-Soviet border and in Mongolia, and the Soviet support of Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia.[48] In addition, in order to institute economic reform, he reduced Soviet aids to Pyongyang and favoured economic relations with Seoul which could help develop the Soviet Far East.[49] On May 16, 1989, the historic summit between Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev that normalised the Sino-Soviet relations took place in Beijing. In other words, by May 1989, the Sino-Soviet conflict and their competition over North Korea were a history. Therefore, North Korea’s significance for China’s security decreased markedly and China seemed ready to establish diplomatic relations with South Korea. Unfortunately, the Tiananmen incident that took place few weeks after the Sino-Soviet normalisation increased North Korea’s significance for China’s security again. According to some sources, had there been no Tiananmen incident on June 4, 1989, China would have set up a government office in Seoul in September 1989, and probably will have established diplomatic relations with South Korea sometime in 1990.[50] Thus, it is worth considering the significance of North Korea for China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident, a factor that retarded the Sino-South Korean normalisation until the early 1990s.
Pyongyang’s significance for China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident
The Tiananmen crackdown brought about the fall of a liberal Zhao Ziyang and the return of rigid doctrinism. In the eyes of Chinese leadership, in order to establish national solidarity, political methods would be more effective than economic devices, at least in the short run.[51] Octogenarian leaders who returned to control political agendas after their eclipse during the decade of reform viewed that the Tiananmen protests and the U.S.-led sanctions were part of the United States’ “peaceful evolution” policy aiming to transform China into America’s image by using various methods: military pressure; economic measures; cultural exchange programmes; and the infiltration bourgeois ideas via the electronic and print media.[52] In addition, market-oriented reform was viewed as the root cause of bourgeois liberalisation.[53] Therefore, the collective worldview of Chinese leadership after 1989 was a throwback to the class-based, two-camp struggle between socialist and imperialist systems that was dominant during Mao’s era.[54] As Politburo Standing Committee member Yao Yilin warned at an emergency enlarged Politburo meeting following the Tiananmen massacre:
"We must on no account take the Polish road or the Hungarian road that the American Dulles designed in the 1950s for the gradual transformation of communist countries. Over the past decades, the imperialists have never changed their original design. They came to cooperate with us and express friendship not only for the purpose of making money but also for the purpose of changing the nature of our country and remodelling our country to become a capitalist society."[55]
In addition, the Tiananmen incident was followed by the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. These trends made the Chinese leadership realise that their political system was in danger and that they must bring its political and ideological ties with the remaining Communist countries.[56] As a result, China needed a neighbouring Communist North Korea as an ally to fend off the peaceful evolution. In addition, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States still asserts its hegemony in Northeast Asia by regularly conducting military exercises with South Korea which China sees as a threat to North Korea. As China has considered North Korea as a buffer state, any action threatening Pyongyang indirectly threatens Beijing as well.[57] A Chinese source reported that in 1990 an internal document was issued instructing all government agencies to support North Korea politically and economically.[58]
China’s relations with North Korea became closer in the wake of the Tiananmen incident. Deng Xiaoping appreciated that North Korea was one of the few countries that supported the PLA crackdown on demonstrations. In their meeting in Beijing in December 1989, Deng Xiaoping and Kim Il Sung agreed to preserve the supremacy of their respective communist parties and stressed their firm commitment to the socialist road.[59] In 1990 and 1991, China seized several opportunities to assure North Korea that their friendship would endure many generations. For example, when Kim Il Sung made his thirty-ninth visit to Beijing in October 1991, Renmin Ribao reported:
"The main objective of Chairman Kim Il Sung’s visit is to further strengthen the traditional friendship between the two parties, the two states, and the two peoples. … Regardless of whatever change may take place in the international situation, the friendship between China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will not change, and will remain permanent."[60]
Economically, due to the Soviet withdrawal of economic assistance, China increased its aids to North Korea because it feared that economic problems in Pyongyang might contribute to the collapse of the North Korean regime.[61] When Kim Il Sung in 1991 pleaded for a loan of 35 billion yuan without any political conditions attached and three millions tons of oil per year, Deng promised a delivery of 1.7 tons of oil – about 500,000 tons more than China was supplying to North Korea – and agreed to postpone carrying out financial transactions in hard currencies.[62] Meanwhile, it continued urging North Korea to reform its autarkic economic system. When General Secretary Jiang Zemin met North Korean Premier Yon Hyong Muk at the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in November 1990, he told Yon that Shenzhen’s success proved that China could pursue an open-door economic policy and preserve the socialist road at the same time, suggesting that North Korea should not be afraid to reform its economy and open its doors to the outside world.[63] Moreover, China supported North Korea’s participation in the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Tumen River Area Development Project in 1991.
However, by the beginning of the 1990s, China realised that its return to rigid doctrinism and the strengthening of its relations with North Korea were not enough to cope with the changing international system. Therefore, China under Deng Xiaoping decided to reorient its foreign policy which facilitated the Sino-South Korean normalisation in 1992.
[1]Huang Hua, “China’s Position on Current World Issues – Foreign Minister Huang Hua’s address to UN General Assembly, October 4 ,” Beijing Review, 11 October 1982, 15.
[2]Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 332.
[3]Zhang Xiaoming, “The Korean Peninsula and China’s National Security: Past, Present and Future,” Asian Perspective, no. 3 (1998): 259.
[4]Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 3rd ed., 738.
[5]Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,” Asian Survey 27 (August 1987): 864.
[6]Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 687.
[7]Parris H. Chang, “Beijing’s Policy toward Korea and PRC-ROK Normalization of Relations,” in The Changing Order in Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula, ed. Manwoo Lee and Richard W. Mansbach (Seoul: Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Kyungnam University, 1993), 162.
[8]Parris H. Chang, “China’s East Asian Policy during the Deng Era,” in Peace and Cooperation in Northeast Asia, ed. Dalchoong Kim (Seoul: Institute of East and West Studies, Yonsei University, 1990), 111.
[9]Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,”: 866-867.
[10]Parris H. Chang, “Beijing’s Policy toward Korea and PRC-ROK Normalization of Relations,” , 164.
[11]Ibid.
[12]Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 156.
[13]Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,”: 867.
[14]Ibid.: 867.
[15]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea: dynamic relations (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1996), 81.
[16]Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,”: 868.
[17]Ibid.: 874-875.
[18]Chae-Jin Lee, “China’s Pragmatic Policy Orientation and its Implication for Korean Unification,” in Perspectives on The Peaceful Reunification of Korea, ed. Hong Nack Kim et al. (Seoul: Institute of Korean Studies, 1988), 17.
[19]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 73.
[20]Ibid., 71.
[21]Chu Sung-po, “Peking’s Relations with South and North Korea in the 1980s,” Issues and Studies 22 (November 1986): 74-75.
[22]“Premier Zhao Ziyang Visits Korea,” Beijing Review, 4 January 1982, 5.
[23]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 107.
[24]Ibid., 113.
[25]Jia Hao and Zhang Qubing, “China’s Policy toward the Korean Peninsula,” Asian Survey 32 (December 1992): 1144.
[26]Ibid.
[27] Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,”: 870.
[28]Chu Sung-po, “Peking’s Relations with South and North Korea in the 1980s,”: 75.
[29]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 72.
[30] Chu Sung-po, “Peking’s Relations with South and North Korea in the 1980s,”: 74.
[31]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 135.
[32]Chong Wook Chung, “China’s Role in Two-Koreas Relations in the 1980s,” Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 5 (Fall 1986): 56.
[33]Wei-Wei Zhang, Ideology and Economic Reform under Deng Xiaoping 1978-1993 (London: Kegan Paul International, 1996), 52.
[34]Hao Yufan, “China and the Korean Peninsula: A Chinese View,”: 878; and Ilpyong J. Kim, “China and the Two Koreas in the post-Seoul Olympics Era,” Korea Observer 14 (Autumn 1988): 14.
[35]Chae-Jin Lee, “The Role of China in the Korean Unification Process,” Asian Perspective 10 (Spring-Summer 1986): 102.
[36]Ibid.: 102-103.
[37]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 79.
[38]Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 105.
[39]Chae-Jin Lee, “The Role of China in the Korean Unification Process,” : 106.
[40]Ibid.
[41]Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 145.
[42]Chae-Jin Lee, “The Role of China in the Korean Unification Process,” : 106.
[43]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 111.
[44]Chae-Jin Lee, “China’s Pragmatic Policy Orientation and its Implication for Korean Unification,”, 18.
[45]Jae Ho Chung, “South Korea-China Economic Relations: The Current Situation and Its Implications,” Asian Survey 28 (October 1988): 1046.
[46]Ilpyong J. Kim, “China and the Two Koreas in the post-Seoul Olympics Era,” Korea Observer 14 (Autumn 1988): 281.
[47]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 84.
[48]Andrew J. Nathan and Robert S. Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997), 49.
[49]Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 203.
[50]Weiqun Gu, “China’s ‘Open-Door’ Policy and the Korean Peninsula,” in Peace and Cooperation in Northeast Asia, 115.
[51]Kim Hakjoon, Korea’s Relations with Her Neighbors in a Changing World, second printing (Seoul: Hollym Corporation, 1993), 525.
[52]David Shambaugh, “Peking’s Foreign Policy Conundrum Since Tienanmen: Peaceful Coexistence vs. Peaceful Evolution,” Issues & Studies 28 (November 1992): 69.
[53] Wei-Wei Zhang, Ideology and Economic Reform under Deng Xiaoping 1978-1993, 180.
[54]David Shambaugh, “Peking’s Foreign Policy Conundrum Since Tienanmen,”: 68-69.
[55]Ibid.: 69.
[56]The impact of Eastern European events on China’s domestic politics is explained in Robert L. Suettinger, Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S.-China Relations 1989-2000 (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 103-107.
[57]Russell Ong, China’s Security Interests in the Post-Cold War Era (London: Curzon, 2002), 58.
[58]Hong Yung Lee, “Future Dynamics in Sino-Korea Relations,” Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 9 (Fall 1990): 34-49, [journal on-line] ; available from http://weblinks1.epnet.com/delivery.asp?tb=0&_ug=dbs+0+In+en-us+sid+... ; accessed 1 April 2003.
[59]Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 119.
[60]Cited in Hong Yung Lee, “China and the Two Koreas: New Emerging Triangle,” in Korea and the World: Beyond the Cold War, ed. Young Whan Kihl (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994), 102.
[61]Parris H. Chang, “Beijing’s Policy toward Korea and PRC-ROK Normalization of Relations,” ,167.
[62] Hong Yung Lee, “China and the Two Koreas: New Emerging Triangle,” : 101; and Chae-Jin Lee, China and Korea, 91.
[63]Ibid., 138-139.
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