China policy, anyone?

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

It’s much too early to join optimists who see a Chinese government media campaign critical of North Korea as evidence Beijing has decided to give Kim Jong Il the boot into negotiating the end of his nuclear weapons program.

The oft repeated cliché China is crucial in solving this continuing international crisis is true. Beijing supplies most of North Korea’s energy, some of its foodstuffs, critical to a bankrupt economy – and probably, tottering regime. Pressure on that artery would produce results.

But to use the State Dept.’s gobbledygook, China’s mediocretocracy is “conflicted”.

Yes, it probably does worry Beijing greybeards their idiosyncratic Little Brother is wandering into nuclear weapons. Any North Korean blackmail potential employable against South Korea, the U.S., and Japan, could inferentially apply to China. Nor could the Chinese be sure The Dear Leader, in sheer desperation, might not peddle nukes to terrorists. China, too, has terrorist issues, especially in its huge and strategic western Singkiang province. [Beijing believes, for example, apparently, assassinations of Chinese engineers building a strategic port for Pakistan at the entrance of the Persian Gulf is the work of Singkiang Moslem Uighurs working with the international Islamiscists.]

That is the threat, of course, most perturbing to U.S. strategists given Pyongyang’s proved passion for supplying other pariah states.

But like the South Koreans, especially the present amateur-night-in-the-Turkish-bath Seoul leadership, Beijing worries about the outcome. An implosion on the East German model would produce unpredictable scenarios. Could Beijing’s North Korean military pals maintain a successor regime friendly to China? Could a flight of refugees [pace Czechoslovakia in 1989], stampeding to join its own 3 million ethnic Koreans into China’s northeast, set off some new domestic eruptions? [Beijing had hoped Seoul’s trade and investment would help mollify that situation, but a reunited Korea would siphon off that capital and technology.] Would a reunited Korea, force majeure, result in a new, powerful nuclearized independent player in the Northeast Asia geopolitical playpen? What would “abandonment” of Pyongyang [in the face of U.S. pressure] do to China’s image of “slowly rising” diplomatic-strategic effort around the world?

Nor through the glass seen darkly do we know how much North Korea’s antics have become a turf battle in the never-ending struggle inside the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy.

Vice President Cheney’s comment that time may not necessarily be on our side in Korea is increasingly cogent. Whether Pyongyang’s official announcement they have nuclear weapons is only bluff – as the Seoul establishment would like to believe. [“They have not held any tests”.] Or whether the old CIA estimate of two or three bombs has now morphed into a small but growing inventory [including “marketable” weapons grade plutonium], North Korea’s very instability is a threat to peace in northeast Asia.

Coordination of policy among the allies, Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo is becoming increasingly more difficult, not less. North Korea plays their differences like a kayagum. Seoul’s idea of a strategy is to feed the tiger [while sending contradictory messages to Washington and dispatching its Iraq contingent]. Japan’s Prime Minister Koizumi is being pushed by public opinion – infuriated by Pyongyang’s refusal to account for kidnapped Japanese and the long muddled history of prejudice and criminal activity [including drugs] by Korean ethnics in Japan -- toward unilateral economic sanctions. With Presidents Bush and Putin’s vaunted personal relationship fraying [to be resurrected at a late February summit?], Putin slides [dripping in oil] between Beijing and Tokyo in an effort to hang on to rapidly depopulating Siberia.

Essential to a successful outcome of the six power talks is an American strategy for dealing with China. True, the issues are formidable: “Taiwan”, Chinese missiles proliferation [in violation of treaty obligations], burgeoning military, anticipation of a China economic crisis [soft or hard landing?], China unfair trade practices [a mushrooming trade deficit, intellectual property rights, yuan-dollar exchange rates, import restrictions], human rights, etc., etc.

If the Chinese have a handle on where the Bush Administration stands on any of these issues, their feng shui cards are better than anything available on this side of the Pacific. It is no secret Beijing would like to swap “Taiwan” with an effort on North Korea. And Bush’s early end to “strategic ambiguity” was blown out of the water by Secretary Powell’s parting Shanghai performance. Nailing government-owned Chinese missile manufacturers in an obscure sanctions list hardly seems worth the bother. Talking about exchange rates in relation to Chinese dumping with as much as a 25-35 percent spread over competitors seems less than a solution. Useless protests when American citizens and permanent residents get thrown in the clink for something less than espionage is equally ineffective.

Washington is notoriously a one-crisis city. And it is clear that Iraq [and its European repercussions] are the No. 1 priority. But definition of the U.S. China policy is overdue and waiting precariously.