Angry China Is Likely to Toughen Its Stand on Korea
By Joseph Kahn
October 10, 2006
New York Times
BEIJING, Oct. 9 — China’s punctilious Foreign Ministry reserves the word hanran, which translates as brazen or flagrant, for serious affronts to the nation’s dignity by countries that have historically been rivals or enemies.
When the previous Japanese prime minister visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which China condemns as honoring Japan’s World War II-era militarism, he was described as “brazen.” When the United States bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, Beijing called that act “flagrant.”
North Korea, a longstanding ideological ally, has had increasingly testy relations with China in recent years. But it was not until Monday, moments after North Korea apparently exploded a nuclear device, that China accused it of a “brazen” violation of its international commitments.
The wording is just one indication that a nuclear test would cross a red line for China, which has devoted years of painstaking diplomatic effort, and staked its delicate relationship with the United States, on the premise that it could deliver a peaceful, negotiated solution to the nuclear standoff with North Korea.
That policy, Chinese analysts say, seems to have failed, and North Korea’s action leaves Beijing little choice but to take a tougher approach. But Chinese leaders still see highly punitive sanctions as unpalatable and counterproductive, and the country’s elite remains sharply divided over how far to distance China from its neighbor, and how closely to embrace the Bush administration, several senior Chinese foreign policy experts said.
“Hanran” has been applied to North Korea for the first time. But Japan and the United States, which favor the sharpest response to North Korea’s test, have been “hanran” for years.
“China is disappointed and angry and will be willing to support stronger sanctions,” said Jin Canrong, a foreign policy expert at People’s University in Beijing. “But I think that is different from saying there will be a drastic change. It is still a question of the right balance.”
The reason there is unlikely to be a major policy change, Mr. Jin and other experts here said, is that North Korea has sharply increased tensions without fundamentally changing China’s calculation of its national interests.
Its priorities remain, first and foremost, promoting internal economic development, the key to longevity for the ruling Communist Party. China’s cautious, authoritarian leaders concluded long ago that generating high growth in its gross domestic product required a benign relationship with the world’s major powers, secure borders and open markets — in a word, stability.
China would like to achieve a denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula but has shown few signs of accepting war or a forced change of government as an acceptable way to achieve that goal.
“The core of the issue is not nuclear weapons,” said Shen Dingli, a leading security expert at Fudan University in Shanghai. “The core of the issue is peace and stability. That is still strongly in China’s interest.”
While China has begun to think like a big power in some respects, its foremost strategic priority has been reclaiming Taiwan, or at least preventing the island from becoming formally independent of mainland China.
Conflict in North Korea or the toppling of Kim Jong Il’s government there could upset both of those goals, Chinese analysts say. A war is viewed as the worst outcome, potentially creating a wave of refugees into China and even risking a broader engagement that could threaten the extended period of harmony in Northeast Asia.