China's motive for sending troops to N. Korean border

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

Optimists have seized on reports in Hong Kong Chinese-language press that Beijing has sent an additional 150,000-man force into the China-North Korean frontier area. They hope it is an expression of Chinese pressure on the North Koreans to come to some understanding with its neighbors and the U.S. over its threat to go to nuclear weapons. Earlier, before the North Koreans had agreed to abandon their demand for bilateral negotiations rather the multilateral meeting the U.S. proposed, there were reports of a shutdown of desperately needed gas pipeline from China into North Korea. North Korea depends for some 80 percent of its fuel and other logistics on the Chinese. But, again, whether this was simply a mechanical breakdown in the facility was not clear.

As usual, Chinese motives and actions are largely an unknown to outsiders, assuming even that the report is accurate. The optimistic scenario is that China, no less than South Korea, Japan, Russia and the U.S. do not want a continued North Korean diverting its resources to nuclear arms that increase tensions in the peninsular and throughout northeast Asia, which could not only set off a nuclear arms race in northeast Asia but might bring down the bankrupt regime itself ø and which could eventually result in a U.S. military effort to disarm Pyongyang.

That may be. But China has long contributed to North KoreaÕs technological buildup, has itself violated nonproliferation of missiles, has apparently let recent North Korean missile shipments to the Mideast move through its air space. WashingtonÕs fear of Pyongyang selling its weapons ø or even nuclear fuel and byproducts ø to pariah states or even nonstate terrorist organizations is at the heart of the North Korean problem. But North Korea, as one of the three Communist states surviving, is after all a longtime ally of Beijing with close ties to ChinaÕs PeopleÕs Liberation Army [PLA].

What seems more likely to this observer is that China is simply reinforcing its internal security forces. The escape of a handful of North Korean refugees into the embassy and consulate compounds of other countries in Beijing and northeast China has been an indicator of a security problem for ChinaÕs police. The northeast China area has an estimated three million ethnic Koreans. There are estimates of at least quarter of a million North Korean refugees living in that border area. Despite PyongyangÕs brutal attempts to halt refugee flight,.growing corruption facilitates trafficking on the border, perhaps even including the North Korean army.

A recent documentary showed an abandoned border North Korean city, decimated by famine which took more than two and a half million lives in the late 90s in North Korea. Tens of thousands of orphans roam the area, sometimes corralled and left to starve in so-called North Korean hostels, searching for abundant food on the China side.

The Russians recently announced increased ÒsecurityÓ reinforcements in their territory abutting North Korea, and Beijing may fear a further breakdown could send floods of refugees into China. BeijingÕs new security forces, the PeopleÕs Armed Police, a new organization amalgamating pre-1989 Tien An Mien crisis border guards, police, and paramilitary forces, has yet to be tested. In that crisis, the civil security forces collapsed and demonstrators eventually had to be put down by PLA regular forces.

Reports indicate some if not most of the demobilized PLA ø part of a continuing effort to disband ChinaÕs armed forces more antiquated units ø are going into the PAP. They resemble the old Soviet KGB armed forces, who were, however, crack troops absolutely loyal to the Communist Party. Originally, the PAP had been commanded by the Chinese security ministry but has been transferred to the Central Military Commissions. That makes them a part of the overall command of Chinese military forces.

The Chinese [and Russian] move during a hiatus in the negotiations between the six countries, reportedly to be picked up in October. The August meeting, arranged by Beijing, accomplished little. There was more North Korean bombast, threatening a nuclear weapons test. It is still not certain whether North Korea has the one or two nuclear weapons generally assigned to them by South Korean and U.S. intelligence, whether they have launched a second drive for nuclear weapons through urnium enrichment. But Western intelligence recently made a new estimate in which the North Koreans are said to have progressed in developing their new, longer range missile. Again, it is still questionable whether the North Koreans have miniaturized a weapon that could be loaded on their missiles. But, for the Tokyo, for example, the 1998 flight of a North Korean missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean, even missiles carrying conventional weapons pose a terror threat whatever the failings, as reported in Western circles, of their inferior guidance systems [again, based on original Chinese design].

Chinese forces moving into border areas may simply be a cautionary move by Beijing in what remains a dangerous and unpredictable situation.