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| Yang Xiangfeng |
This time last year the world was still very much unsure what would unfold amid Kim Jong-un's Olympic charm offensive after the "fire and fury" of 2017. But now we are on the cusp of witnessing a second summit between Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump.
A year ago, Chinese officials, still trying to charm and being charmed by Trump, did not see the trade war coming; and now they are working hard to see the end of it. Apropos Korean affairs in particular, several broad observations jump out.
First, a great deal of what was said or implied by Beijing about its relations with North Korea seems to have lost its relevance. After years of characterizing Sino-DPRK relations as "normal state-to-state" relations, since 2018 Beijing has dropped the "normal" reference, as Kim's denuclearization pledge removed the biggest obstacle between them. In their meetings, whereas Kim Jong-un appeared to dutifully ingratiate himself with his host, Xi Jinping went to great lengths to emphasize the enduring Chinese devotion to the North Korean party, people and state.
Second, for all the suggestions that North Korea was a sovereign nation making its own decisions, especially when Pyongyang defied its wishes, Beijing can no longer convincingly claim that it has no influence on Pyongyang's behaviour. Such sentiment cannot be made more emphatically than by Robert Kelly, an American scholar based in South Korea, who, in the wake of news breaking on Kim's first visit to Beijing in late March, argued that "Next time, the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs says the real issue is between the U.S. and North Korea, and that China is just a mediator or just wants stability, we will know they are lying." In fact, in the past couple of years, Chinese influence was placed on full display ― positive in the form, for example, of the Air China plane that flew Kim to his history-making rendezvous with Trump, and negative in the sense that its cooperation was indispensable in Trump's maximum-pressure campaign against North Korea.
Third, the intertwining of China's relations with North Korea and the United States is now a matter of indisputable fact. In a dramatic yet also perfectly understandable way, the Xi-Kim meetings have been serving as a good indicator ― or even predictor, as in the case of their January 2019 meeting ― of the Kim-Trump summits. The same days (in January 2019) when Kim paid his fourth visit to China in 10 months, the U.S. delegation was also in Beijing to negotiate a deal to end the trade spat. And now it looks like Trump will meet Xi somewhere right after seeing Kim in Vietnam.
By no means was Trump the only one ― as he often did after Singapore ― to raise suspicion and lodge complaints that Beijing intended to sabotage the Pyongyang-Washington thaw to get Washington to compromise on trade. Whereas the Foreign Ministry spokesperson publicly mocked that claim, my sense is that Chinese leaders are too eager to manage the fallout of the trade war ― whose impact has been more damaging to the Chinese economy than perhaps expected ― to mix the two issues in their dealings with the Trump administration, so much so that the case of Huawei's top executive's arrest in Vancouver at the behest of Washington has seen Chinese authorities mostly train their ire on Canada.
But Chinese activism on the peninsula is not to be denied. Besides arriving on his birthday, Kim's January sojourn to Beijing was noted by some official sources for several "details" of great distinction that included his warm reception by the host, the make-up of his entourage, his itinerary and the subjects of discussion between the two sides.
Beneath all those excessive expressions of mutual love and respect, however, even the most ardently pro-DPRK scholar was clear-eyed about the geopolitical underpinning of the fast warming of the relationship from deep freeze just two years ago. Short on specifics, other analysts have not shied away either from linking Kim's audience with Xi and his then unannounced second meeting with Trump. The key word they preferred is "coordination" of positions of all sides without giving the impression that the Xi-Kim meeting was aimed at targeting the U.S. A further common thread of interests (or hope) is that Kim's tour of a factory and the inclusion of some key economic officials in the trip are clear signs North Korea is serious about prioritizing economic development.
Moving forward, the Chinese approach is quite clear. On one hand, having repaired its relations with Pyongyang on Kim's promise to denuclearize, China has no appetite to continue the pressure campaign against its nominal ally. Instead, it is back to the inducement track adopted in the last years of Kim Jong-il. On the other hand, the Chinese side hopes to see more progress at the Kim-Trump meeting in Vietnam.
Given that they have reached some sort of understanding with North Korea, Beijing clearly wants to see Washington compromise on Pyongyang's terms with respect to sanction relief and confidence-building measures. A Global Times editorial, for example, urged Washington to "shoulder the responsibilities it deserves, and absorb the cost that it should undertake." These expectations and sentiments, however, are not new. What remains to be seen is what happens in Vietnam and what actions Beijing might take to ease the pain caused to North Korea by the sanctions mandated by the Security Council.
Dr. Yang Xiangfeng is Assistant Professor in the East Asia International College at Yonsei University in South Korea. He holds a master's from Nanjing University and a PhD in political science and international relations from the University of Southern California (USC).
