And now, North Korea: China's fourth generation faces major test

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

China has accepted the serve the U.S. has zinged into its court over North KoreaÕs threat to become a central distribution for weapons of mass destruction. It takes time before we know whether Beijing could and would do more than keep the volley going in forthcoming talks in Beijing.

There may be Chinese leaders who think the issues can be compromised. The probability is they cannot. If WashingtonÕs war on terrorism has meaning ø now that blood and treasure has poured into the Iraq with its not inconsiderable aftermath demands Ñ it must dismantle North KoreaÕs terror regime. For Pyongyang already had become a source of missile technology to rogue states, and it threatens to go on to nuclear weapons proliferation. The combination of these WMD weapons and its bankrupt economy make it a timebomb on the doorstep of its neighbors Ñ not excluding China. That may not demand a U.S. military campaign or even a sudden change in North Korean leadership, but it does call for Beijing to use its leverage to start the process of bringing Kim Il Jong and his generals to heel. China has a unique role as North KoreaÕs aid supplier, keeping a bankrupt afloat.

As always, rumor mills are busy churning out propaganda about PyongyangÕs intentions for nowhere has there been a regime with less transparency. Kim did ÒdisappearÓ from public view for 30 days. Was it a secret trip to China? A so-called private network has over the past six months smuggled out two dozen Korean officials, including the head of the nuclear program. Does that mean that the totalitarian regime is imploding? Announcements of initiation of a new nuclear weapons program have been confused. Is that deliberate propaganda or simply the incompetence of a kowtowing propaganda machine that once thought North Korea won merit points with its ÒjuceÓ [self-reliance] page advertisements in The New York Times?

Beijing probably knows more about all this than any other foreign country. But when Kim last fall appointed a Dutch Chinese businessman to set up a mammoth free trade zone just as his elaborate Chinese commercial empire collapsed, Beijing spokesmen stuttered Ñ and he was arrested indicating there are even riddles for PyongyangÕs Chinese comrades.

Still Beijing has taken up the role of intermediary between Pyongyang and Washington, bridging the American refusal to enter boobytrapped bilateral negotiations, using trilateral discussions as a sop to WashingtonÕs demands for multilateralisnm. But President and Party leader Hu Jintao is refusing to see Japanese Prime Minsiter Koizumi whom the U.S. wants to include in the discussions along with South KoreaÕs new Roh Administration. Washington seems to believe that only by including all PyongyangÕs neighbors [including Russia] will it avoid the trap of earlier agreements which North Korea fragrantly violated.

That is the real issue in these negotiations. The U.S., Japan, and South Korean ø most of all ø are willing to extend massive economic assistance to the North Korean regime if it will agree not only to abandon its role as one of the worldÕs rogue munitions sales sources but permit an air-tight inspection and control regime.

China has its own concerns about North Korea, or so it would seem. Most observers believe the Chinese do not want to see a nuclear armed North Korea although there is evidence it helped Pyongyang reach its present capabilities. There is general agreement that a nuclear armed Korea with ICBMs would start an arms race in the area, not excluding that Japan might go nuclear. Most observers believe China is not anxious ø nor is Japan ø to see a united Korea, which would be a powerful new state playing high-stake politics in the region. And a reunited Korea would be devoting investment to bringing North Korea up to its own prosperous level, less interested in continuing major investment in north China.

But China, again the conventional wisdom holds, dare not put so much pressure on North Korea that it pulls the brick that brings down the ailing regime, scattering refugees and adding new unknowns in the region. There are, too, probably according to some who read the anti-American tracts of the Chinese military, elements of the Chinese security apparatus that believe there is profit in having a North Korean puppy yapping at the U.S.Õ heels.

The North Korean crisis has matured [unfortunately for them] just as a new generation of Chinese leadership is grappling for power and being tested by another crisis: the outbreak of a worldwide pandemic of ARS. Heads have rolled already in the Chinese bureaucracy over the standard old Chinese Communist effort to conceal a disaster. This was supposed to be a generation of new leaders whose chief characteristic was their technocratic abilities and their pragmatism. They have failed one test already. LetÕs see how they do with the second, North Korea.