World Tribune.com


A SENSE OF ASIA

Beware of Chinese bearing gifts!


See the Sol Sanders Archive

By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Sol W. Sanders

October 21, 2002

There will be less than meets the eye when Chinese President Jiang Zemin puts on the ten gallon hat once worn by Deng Xiaoping at President BushÕs Crawford ranch October 25.

There are pressing issues between Washington and Beijing. High on the agenda is North Korean development of weapons of mass destruction, something the Chinese have said, at least publicly, is a high priority.

But Jiang comes amidst another struggle for power in the long bloody history of the Chinese Communist Party. The 76-year-old Jiang should retire ø from his three roles as president, Party supremo, and Party military commission chairmanship. It was from this latter seat that his mentor Deng exercised power long after he left other posts, propped up for decision-making until his death at 93. A retirement rule aims at eliminating this stumbling gerontocracy, traditional to Chinese bureaucracy.

But the confirming 18th Party Congress to be held last month has been postponed until next month. ÒFourth GenerationÓ Chinese Communist leadership headed by JiangÕs anointed heir, Vice President Hu Jintao, is chaffing. And Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, the poor manÕs Chou Enlai with popularity among the government cadre, publicly presses for elders to join him as he retires. Complicating the maneuvering is that Hu is not JiangÕs candidate. Furthermore, Hu has studiously avoided American contacts. His Washington visit and a European trip orientation earlier this year preserved his mysterious image. But his crackdown as Tibet gauleiter and one of the younger generation who enthusiastically beat the dead horse after the 1989 Tiernanmin Square massacre suggests he is no pussycat.

Thus hope for a new comprehensive Sino-American compact are dim.Still, the list of issues that aggravate Beijing-Washington relations is long and complex. It includes everything from ChinaÕs slow implementation of World Trade Organization membership to human rights.

Uppermost among BushÕs advisers has to be what, if anything, Beijing can, would, and for what price, do to bring North KoreaÕs Kim Il Jong to heel. The assumption has been that China is virtually the only power that can influence Pyongyang, notorious even in the defunct Communist Bloc as secretive, devious and unpredictable. In the BlocÕs glory days, KimÕs father played Beijing against Moscow. Yet despite last yearÕs strange meandering Russian visit and a recent encounter with President Putin in RussiaÕs Far East, MoscowÕs influence on Dear Leader appears minimal.

But China is the major source of North KoreaÕs desperately short energy. Border area black-markets operating among ChinaÕs 2-million Korean minority helps keep it going Ñ no small task with as many as two million dead in an induced famine [food relief from the U.S., Japan and South Korea diverted to its million man army] in a population of less than 22 million.

Although conventional wisdom maintains the 50-year ironclad dictatorship of Kim Il Sung passed to his son, that may not be the case. Recent events have added new mystery.

  • When Assistant Sec. of State Kelly bearded the North Koreans with evidence they violated nuclear agreements, they denied it. Later, they aggressively admitted it, threatened they had other more destructive weapons.

  • When Pyongyang suddenly moved to set up a free trade zone following economic liberalization strategy pressed on them by Beijing [Kim went to Shanghai to investigate last summer], they chose a Chinese in such ill odor in Beijing he was immediately arrested, after which Pyongyang sent a politburo mission to Beijing to apologize.

  • Within hours after announcing a precedent breaking invitation to Prime Minister Koizumi, North Korean spy ships made a feint at Japanese Naval Self Defense forces ø a principle issue between Tokyo and Pyonyang [after the Japanese sunk North Korean craft earlier this year].

  • After years of denial, Pyongyang admitted abducting Japanese and apologized for the ÒmistakeÓ. But garbled explanations of their deaths, Japanese media reports there are more unaccounted for, and sending Ò:mindersÓ with those permitted to visit Japan, turned the issue into an anti-Pyongyang propaganda fiasco.

North Korean watchers explain these anomalies as typical Pyongyang behavior that plays a cat and mouse game with [na•ve] Western negotiators. But an equally plausible interpretation is ignorance at policymaking levels in Pyongyang ø or an inner struggle in a collapsing regime. With a U.S. tripwire force of 32,000 U.S. soldiers sitting under North Korean artillery in South Korea, missiles that have already overshot Japan into the Pacific, the probability that Pyongyang has several nuclear weapons, what is happening in Pyongyang becomes a paramount U.S. concern.

Thus Chinese influence on Pyongyang becomes subject No. 1 at Crawford. But the question is whether, given JiangÕs ambiguous role in the Chinese domestic scramble for power, how useful he can be in defusing the Korean crisis and what price the U.S. can and must pay for his help.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

October 21, 2002

Print this Article Print this Article Email this article Email this article Subscribe to this Feature Free Headline Alerts


See current edition of

Return to World Tribune.com Front Cover
Your window on the world

Contact World Tribune.com at world@worldtribune.com