The “challenges” of the geastarbeiter are just that–fairly minor challenges, which can be solved without too much damage.
The eventual use of nukes produced by Korea and then sold to other groups, will not be a “challenge”–it will be a disaster.
China is the only country with any possibility of influencing N. Korea. But they prefer to ignore the problem. And within a few years, it will be too late.
European elections provide other inputs.
In any case, confident assertions about others decisions, I am sure it has great value even more so when made on partial and outdated information.
Yes, European elections show that there are some serious problems with ethnic tension. But the elections are still being held within stable society; despite the “challenges”,the country remains stable, society is not collapsing in Germany or wherever…
My point is that if China were to absorb several million N.Koreans, the resulting challenges and tension would be reasonable, and not threaten the foundations of their entire society.
But if Kim continues building nukes and selling them to terrorists, then China will find itself in serious danger of the entire society collapsing.
A couple nukes in major places around the world will disrupt economic markets so severely that the whole world will be affected. And the Chinese communist party is only strong because right now they are keeping people employed and raising living standards.
So the average Chinese citizen that is willing to let the internet be censored, and give up other freedoms, because life is still good for them .They don’t protest their own government, even though millions of them have tasted a better life in the West (at western universities, or just by using the internet, etc.)
So it seems to me that the most important thing for the leaders of Chinese Communist Party to stay in power is to keep their economy strong.
And than means they should try to prevent N.Korea from selling nukes.
Absorbing 3 million N.Koreans in a country of 900 million would be easier than trying to stay in power when half the Chinese population starts protesting.
But they don’t seem to be listening to my brilliant ideas 
I’m dubious that any Chinese policy of allowing in North Korean workers would have a significant effect on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. I’m not seeing any direct connection between the two.
I’ll yield to your greater expertise in terms of China’s rising costs of production. But we’re still talking a malnourished population and again there is only twenty-five million of them. I have to imagine that getting them into competitive shape as a workforce is going to require a considerable investment in time and money. And once they are somehow transformed into a productive economic colony, how long before wages et al equalize to that of China as a whole?
Yeah. Even Chinese can’t just up and move from the countryside to the big city to get better employment opportunities without first getting approval from the government.
China doesn’t have a very low employment in need of a large influx of jobs from foreign guest workers. Quite the opposite, in fact.
That said, a lot of North Korean’s DO work in China (Russia as well)…they simply work as slaves with their salaries going back to Kim and country. Of course, these are ‘official’ workers.
You have to ask yourself a fundamental question here…why are those ‘ghost cities’ not being used by the Chinese. You don’t think it’s because of a shrinking population or because there is so much housing that large developed areas just go empty because there aren’t any people to use them…do you? The actual reasons are complex, but some of them have to do with how Chinese real estate investment and speculation has developed alongside CCP corruption. I don’t think you could (or even the CCP could, not without some serious headaches) just take those properties and hand them over to North Korean’s to act as some sort of ghetto for NK workers.
It seems clear (at least to me and others that I’ve talked to) that much of the bluster from the United States about not tolerating a nuclear NK is a signal to China that if you don’t take action the United States will. While it clear from history since 1950 that China doesn’t want the United States on her doorstep, it would be interesting to see how China would react to military action against NK.
I believe that the US is hoping that China would rather take action itself than to leave it to chance for the US to do so.
In many wants, a Chinese annexation for NK isn’t the worst thing for anyone.
Except for the potential loss of life and the reality that China won’t do this, it’s probably the best possible outcome at this point (depending on how it transpires…I think an outright attempt at conquest by China would be a disaster of biblical proportions on par with a US/South Korean invasion). I can’t think of any change to the status quo that doesn’t result in a large loss of life, unfortunately, but perhaps a Chinese annexation in the right circumstances might be less deadly than other alternatives.
We’ll it’s easy for others (me in this case) to trade someone else’s life. But take Iraq under Hussein, or rather take the entire Korean peninsula if the 1950 invasion had been successful. Imagine the life of the now 51 million South Koreans under the brutal Kim dictatorship for the last three-quarter’s of a century. At some point, isn’t the nation, and it’s people, generation after generation better off under some freedom even it there is a cost in the beginning?
How to justify a change in the status quo, however? Sure, down the road a decade or so the lives of the average North Korean will probably be better. But in the interim, they certainly won’t, and many will die in such a change, even with the best intentions and a best-case scenario. It’s easier to kick the can down the road and hope that something changes than contemplate the large humanitarian crisis (as well as the economic one that will befall any nation that annexes North Korea) that would unfold by trying to change that status quo. Would it be worth it to free the North Korean people from the brutal regime they labor under? I’m not so sure it would be…which I think is why former US administrations have basically not done much more than sanctions.
Well to be fair with the Administrations since Eisenhower, The Truman Administration did try and free the good people of North Korea and were met with a strong “no can do” from China. And there wasn’t any appetite from the American people for a second bite at that apple.
As I wrote above it’s easy for me to say that the amorphous “we” need to do something from mom’s Barcalounger in Sheboygan. But it’s disheartening to wave off the 25 million people and their progeny in the North without so much of a “sucks being you” who are condemned to live under one of the world’s worst human rights societies in history.
Now I heard there are cemeteries in North Korea filled with maybe 100,000 dead Chinese from the Korean war. Many chinese still visit those. They wouldnt want those to fall into the hands of the Americans.
I’d say that the chances of this happening (or at least China deciding to topple Kim and install a puppet) just went up with Trumps recent announcement Especially as it appears excluding China is part of the deal (North Korea showing that they are big boys who can deal with the US without China’s help).
Assuming the meeting happens outside North Korea it has to be tempting for China to arrange for Kim Jong-un to have a tragic accident en route to the meeting, and have a pro-China general step in to replace him.
I think assassinating Jong-un is an improbable move, too incautious for Beijing. There would immediately be a weird and insane reaction from the coalition in power in the USA. There would immediately be a very worrying reaction in North Korea itself. And I think it’d create serious grievances in South Korea longer-term.