North Korea and South Korea are known for their strong nationalism. In order to dominate and control their own destiny, the two Koreas often take advantage of changes in the surrounding international situation and launch diplomatic offensive. Therefore, the Korean Peninsula has been characterized by repeated climaxes and tensions from time to time. What deserves our attention is that recently both South Korea and North Korea are trying to create an international situation that is favorable to themselves through proactive diplomatic offensives, making the situation on the Korean Peninsula unstable again. Many western analysts are thus worried that Russia, North Korea and China are building a trilateral "axis" to jointly fight against Western democracies. The purpose of this article is to refute this argument from the perspective of the characteristics of China’s Korean Peninsula policy and Xi Jinping’s diplomacy towards the two Koreas.
The biggest feature of China's Korean Peninsula policy is always emphasizing peace and stability on the peninsula. It is mainly based on strategic considerations. It regards North Korea as a buffer zone and does not allow hostile forces to enter North Korea. This was the main reason why Mao Zedong made the decision to fight against the United States and aid North Korea and participated in the Korean War in the 1950s at the expense of heavy casualties. Since then, China's policy towards North Korea was primarily featured with being tolerant as much as possible for maintaining friendship. After Xi Jinping came to power, he was quite disgusted with North Korea's repeated nuclear tests and explosions since 2006 despite Beijing's opposition. China's international prestige was thus severely damaged. From Xi’s perspective, North Korea was disrespectful to China.
As a result, in 2014, Xi Jinping became the first top leader of the Communist Party of China to visit Seoul first and then Pyongyang since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and signed the China-South Korea Free Trade Agreement with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. It is undoubtedly playing the South Korea card against North Korea. However, in 2016, North Korea began another nuclear test explosion and missile test launches. Park Geun-hye was furious and angrily announced the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, thus offending China. China believed that South Korea's deployment of THAAD was for its own security interests, disregarding China's security interests, which caused the deterioration of relations between the two countries and has not yet been completely restored to date. On the other hand, after Kim Jong-un visited China four times between 2018 and 2019, Xi Jinping visited Pyongyang for the first time in June 2019. This was because Kim Jong-un declared his willingness to give up nuclear weapons. He then held summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump successively during the period of 2018-2019, which led to a de-escalation of the situation on the Korean Peninsula.
Nevertheless, after South Korea's far-right leader Yoon Seok-yue took office as president in May last year, he was dissatisfied with North Korea's repeated missile provocations and decided to adopt a policy of maximum pressure on North Korea, siding with the United States. In April this year, he and President Joe Biden announced the Washington Declaration on sharing nuclear weapons. The US then sent a nuclear-powered submarine to the Korean Peninsula to demonstrate the extended nuclear deterrence strategic cooperation between the two countries. In August, he held a summit with US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida at Camp David, which led to Kim Jong-un's response to visit Russia in September to strengthen military cooperation between the two countries. Both the United States and China expressed concern, and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held secret meeting in Malta immediately. However, the two parties have different concerns. The US is worried that the Russia-Ukraine war will be unfavorable to Ukraine and harm its own interests due to North Korea's aid to Russia, while Beijing believes that the Korean Peninsula is heading towards an arms race, which is detrimental to China's strategic security.
In other words, different countries may not have the same priority of national interests, nor may they have the same foreign policy objectives, not to mention the different diplomatic means they can use due to the difference in the degree of power that they possess. The national interests of China, Russia and North Korea are obviously not identical. Although all three countries are dissatisfied with the hostile policy of the United States, the latter two have the same interest of fighting against the United States, while Beijing favors the G2. As China and the United States are superpowers, if they cooperate with each other, they can manage to maintain peace on the Korean Peninsula and to prevent the outbreak of a war.
In short, Xi Jinping formulates the Korean Peninsula policy at three levels from top to bottom. The highest level is the competition and cooperation between the United States and China, followed by the triangular relationship between China, Russia and the United States, and the third level is China’s bilateral relationship with two Koreas and Japan. Nowadays, the vicious confrontation between the two Koreas has harmed China's interests. South Korea has brought about the presence of American nuclear-powered submarines to the Korean Peninsula and the US-South Korea military exercises in the Yellow Sea. The strengthening of military cooperation between North Korea and Russia is bound to further worsen the situation on the peninsula.
Against this background, there is a need to manage rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula with the United States. On the other hand, Xi Jinping may accept Yoon Seok-yue's invitation to visit South Korea. Whether it is the China-South Korea summit or the China-Japan-South Korea summit in Seoul, it is to check and balance Kim Jong-un. Of course, for China, the best case scenario is that Xi can visit Seoul and Hanoi ahead of the San Francisco APEC summit in the coming November, then for Xi it means that he in conjunction with Biden can shape the Indo-Pacific region on an equal footing and present an image of jointly governing the Indo-Pacific.
(Adjunct Professor of Diplomacy and Director, Center for WTO Studies, College of International Affairs, National Chengchi University To-hai Liou, PhD)
