What exactly does China get out of supporting North Korea

Great Debates
1

China and South Korea do $300 billion a year in trade. China roughly the same value worth of trade with Japan. They do maybe $5 billion a year in trade with North Korea.

I’ve heard they like having North Korea as a buffer, and they don’t want the ethnic Koreans in Northeast China getting riled up. But in the modern age, why is a land buffer with South Korea so important? Also, most of the ethnic koreans live in a small area in one province in China, so it isn’t like upset there would lead to mass unrest in China.

I’ve heard the arguments for what China gets out of its alliance with North Korea, and I don’t get it. North Korea is constantly threatening war, any true war by them would cost China trillions in economic activity because even if China isn’t hit, its 3 biggest trading partners (US, South Korea, Japan) would be attacked.

Also, why is a mass influx of North Korean immigrants so worrysome to them? What do they fear the migrants will do?

I suppose you can make the argument that China supports North Korea due to ideological similarities, but China and Vietnam have ideological similarities and their relations aren’t that great. Same with China and Laos, there are issues with the relations.

Also, if (possibly) the North Korean regime does eventually collapse, many people there are going to learn that China helped prop up a brutal, inept regime for years and this will likely create a lot of resentment among the North Koreans. Maybe, but maybe not. Stalin is still beloved in Russia 60 years after his death so who knows.

Supposedly China wants ‘no war, no instability, no nukes’. So what do they get out of supporting a regime that threatens war, causes instability, pursues nukes?

2

I can’t imagine that any country, no matter how large, is automatically improved by an influx of, say, 5 million new immigrants.

3

China is not a friend to the US. To the extent that NK continues to be a thorn in America’s back side, China will continue to support NK.

4

They have a mutual defense pact and they probably want to be known as an actor who abides by the treaties they sign. I doubt they’re actually getting much material benefit out of it anymore. (Back when they signed the treaty, iirc North Korea was actually the richer Korea).

5

Others may have touched on it already, but there are a few possible ‘pluses’ from China’s perspective.

For now, China has a buffer along its southern border with Korea, which is what prompted their intervention in the 1950s to begin with. China has a history of being bullied by imperialist expansion and determined not to allow an outside superpower position itself so closely again.

In the moderate term, depending on how one looks at it, I could also see that North Korea’s bellicosity could have the added benefit of exposing the American defense shield as a paper tiger, and thus potentially weakening American influence in the region. If the United States allows repeated and incremental provocation to go unchallenged except for ineffective sanctions, then it’s possible that South Korea, Japan and others decide to assume more responsibility for developing indigenous capabilities. This would be something China might find advantageous.

However, over the longer term, this scenario carries with it two potential adverse reactions. One is that the United States decides to abandon diplomacy and launch a preemptive first strike on North Korea in an attempt to salvage its influence in the region. That possibility might seem remote, but it’s possible. The other potentially negative consequence is that Japan and/or South Korea might aggressively advance their military capabilities, which would almost certainly destabilize the region further.

I think it’s time for China and the United States to reassess their approaches to the North Korea situation to avoid longer term dangers. It would be disastrous for the United States alliance and hence its influence (not to mention the partners themselves) to have diplomacy fail and result in military conflict. It would be disastrous for China, too. At the same time, North Korea’s escalation is probably going to have declining returns for China as well. There will be pressure to do something drastic at some point. What might work is for China and the US (as well as South Korea and Japan) to come to some sort of agreement on economic assistance and limited amounts of legal trade in exchange for a freeze of further nuclear development. Things like human rights could perhaps come up at a later time.

6

For a while, I think that China was using North Korea as a distraction tool. Whenever negative attention would start turning to China, over sweatshops or Tibet or whatever else, they’d ask North Korea to ramp up the aggressive talk and divert everyone’s attention away.

Now that China is so big, economically, I don’t think they need that any more. However, the old guard among the politicians probably haven’t fully caught up to that yet and also figure that they owe NK for all the service over the decades.

Speaking of which, officially North Korea is one of the few remaining Communist countries in Asia and the only one which is actually trying to do it for real (supposedly). While China has long-since completely abandoned Communism, it’s still the Communist Party in charge and they still talk about the Communist Revolution and Chairman Mao as both having been amazing and great things. Particularly among the old guard, they are still committed to talking up the greatness of “Communism”. Propping up North Korea is a cheap way to advertise themselves as being pro-Communism while not doing the Communism at all back in the homeland.

7

You know how, when a bad kid behaves badly in school, the teacher gives him rewards or praise if he cuts back on his bad behavior? Much more so than if a good kid never misbehaves.

Same with China. When China withdraws some of its support for Pyongyang, the international community lavishes praise on Beijing - a lot more than if Beijing had never supported North Korea in the first place.

“You have to first be bad, in order to get credit for becoming good.”
Now China can say, “Well, America, if you give us a concession on THIS, we’ll stop supporting Pyongyang on THAT…” you take every bargaining chip you can get.

8

All those refugees would have to be fed. Worse, they would have to be prevented from spreading through China.
Then China would have to do something to create a government in North Korea. There isn’t any alternatives at the moment. If they install someone, the Army, who have done fairly well under the current system, might revolt. They don’t need their own Iraq.

As far as people figuring out they have been propping up a dictatorial regime, I think we’ve figured that out already. It might be better than the alternative.

9

If it’s so important for China to have a buffer state between themselves and a western capitalist state, why is their extensive border with India not a problem?

10

That border was dangerously close to being a war zone a month ago.

Also, there are no Himalayas on the border with North Korea. It’s right there next to Dandong.

11

Exactly. This is what it looks like when a country, by and large, doesn’t have close ties with its neighbour.

$5 billion of trade across a border as long as China-NK, with an economy as big as China’s, is about as close to zero as you can practically get. Although another wave of sanctions are being added to try to get the figure still lower.

I think the degree to which China and NK are allies, and China “props up” the regime is often exaggerated, particularly on US media.

12

  1. They have fought a major war with India and nearly came to blows last month as Lord Feldon pointed out.

  2. Big fucking mountains

  3. See No 2

And did you just call India “a western capitalist state”? Nehru is going to rise up from[del] his grave [/del], whatever gutter they threw his ashes in and bitchslap you.:stuck_out_tongue:

13

The US has had a more difficult time with occupations since our standards of morality are a lot more hippie-tastic than China’s. I don’t know that they would have such a difficult time suppressing the people of North Korea.

14

China does a minuscule amount of trade with North Korea, but North Korea does an enormous amount of trade with China. You’re right. China’s total trade with North Korea is about $5 billion, which, compared to the amount of trade they do with the US or Japan, or South Korea, is next to nothing. That $5 billion, though, is about 2/3 of all of North Korea’s foreign trade. If North Korea and China stopped trading, China would be inconvenienced. North Korea would be economically devastated.

15

Right, and the title of this thread is what does China get out of supporting NK.
I was just pointing out that the $5 billion dollars of trade illustrates the degree to which China does not support NK because $5 billion is about as little trade as you could possibly have across such a big border with the world’s biggest market.

But we’ll see… China has pledged to try to eliminate even that trade, starting with banning coal imports from NK.

16

An economically devastated country with long range missiles and nuclear weapons. Jeez, why would China not want that on their borders.

17

What China gets out of it, though, in addition to rare earth metals, is not having a failed state on its border which can spill over to China.

18

In my opinion, the question should really be divided in two:

  1. What did China get from supporting North Korea up until Kim Jong Un?
  2. What is China now getting from supporting North Korea under Kim Jong Un?

I think the answer to the first is fairly obvious: it kept the U.S. off of its borders, it was probably a fairly beneficial relationship for the first 30-something years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, and the relationship basically conformed to China’s desire to have very serious influence on the policies of its closest neighbors.

Now, however, things are waaaaay different than they were for many decades. I think everyone is right that the benefits of North Korea to China are starting to fade in light of the very serious headaches that KJU is causing. I think China is slowly, slowly starting to reevaluate its view of North Korea, but who knows where that is leading? China sure isn’t the greatest partner for anyone is diplomatic matters, so I’m not holding my breath that China is going to be the white knight who rides in to rescue everyone.

19

Broadly, people need to stop thinking of China as some large monolithic nation. Even the CCP isn’t completely in lockstep. So, you need to be asking what do the various factions and individual elites get out of support for North Korea, instead of what ‘China’ gets out of it. I can think of one big thing China, as a whole gets out of continued support of North Korea though, something I’m pretty sure most everyone agrees on…if the North collapses, there would be a flood of refugees looking to cross into China, and basically no one wants that. Some North Korean slave labor? Sure, that works for the Chinese (and Russians), but they already have a pretty big problem with illegal immigrants from North Korea, and outside of some of the dirtier jobs that the Chinese don’t want to do there isn’t much place for a bunch of North Koreans. In addition to this, from the perspective of all of China, I’d say that China has a similar paranoia to Russia and already feels like it’s being surrounded by hostile powers (ironic, in that China has done the most to alienate its neighbors…kind of like Russia :p), so would want to keep North Korea as a buffer. While the trade possibilities of a unified Korea (under a South Korean government) have major potential for China (and some factions are in favor of that), I think overall it would be a concern for China as a whole to have that unified Korea on their doorstep.

20

Big nations that are paranoid about foreign threats, want to direct other nations into their own doctrines, and alienate everyone with their bullying are the worst.