China’s Pro-Isolationist Intentions: Beijing’s Curious Engagement With North Korea and Myanmar
DEVELOPMENTS
China’s policies toward North Korea and Myanmar are a sharp departure
from international consensus on how to deal with these regional outcasts. China
continues to help the North Korean and Myanmar regimes survive despite pressure
from the international community for them to reform.
On January 31, 2011, Myanmar made tentative steps toward a self-
proclaimed democratic transition, opening Parliament in the new capital of
Naypidaw for the first time in 23 years. Just four days later, the government
appointed as interim Prime Minister the junta’s second-in-command Thin Sein, a
career soldier who became a general in 2005 and then the country’s Premier in
2007. Despite Thin Sein’s lukewarm reception by the international community,
China’s President Hu Jintao called Thin Sein within hours of his appointment to
congratulate him.
That same month, North Korea granted China a ten-year lease to its ports in
Rajin, giving Chinese ships direct access to the East Sea that would shorten routes
to its eastern coastal cities and Japan. China and North Korea are still negotiating
a North Korean offer from 2009 to lease to China for 50 to 100 years Wihwa Island
(Weihua Island in Chinese) and Hwanggeumpyeong Island (Huangjinping in
Chinese) as Free Trade Zones in order to reduce trade barriers and bureaucratic
requirements between the two countries. The two islands belong to North Korea
and are located on the Yalu River which separates the two countries.
BACKGROUND
North Korea’s survival depends almost wholly on Chinese funding. China
provides more than $2 billion worth of imports, which comprise 80 percent of North
Korean consumer goods and half of its food supply. In addition to economic aid to
prop up the regime, China also shields North Korea from international sanctions
and condemnation while quietly reigning in the regime from acting too aggressively
vis-à-vis the US and South Korea. This balancing act is evidenced by China’s refusal
to admonish North Korea for the March 2010 Cheonan attack and its influence in
restraining North Korea from launching retaliatory attacks in response to South
Korea’s military drills in the Yellow Sea.
North Korea prioritizes its isolation, which cuts off exposure to the outside
that would jeopardize the Kim dynasty’s ideological monopoly. To this end, North
Korea only maintains positive relationships with its patron, China, as well as
countries that import North Korean weapons systems, including Myanmar, Iran,
and Syria. The regime’s priorities became more obvious after North Korea’s
announcement of Kim Jong-Un as “the only successor to his father,” Kim Jong Il. As
North Korea began to propagate the heroic image of Kim Jong-Un domestically, its
foreign policy turned increasingly aggressive, possibly to show the world and the
country’s own military leadership that Kim Jong-Il’s “military-first policy” would
continue after the succession. In March 2010, North Korean submarines torpedoed
the South Korean naval ship, the Cheonan, in the Yellow Sea. Months later, in
November 2010, North Korea fired artillery shells across the Northern Limit Line
striking Yeonpyong Island and killing four South Koreans. From the standpoint of
international security, this North Korean aggression demonstrates that North Korea
can lash out against the international community, the US, and South Korea, without
compromising its isolation.
Unlike North Korea, Myanmar has projected the impression of economic and
political reform since the military junta’s takeover in 1988. The November 2010
elections, which were orchestrated to benefit the junta-sponsored USDP, epitomize
Myanmar’s hollow democratic reform. Opposition candidate Aung San Suu Kyi, who
won the last legitimate elections in 1990, was put under house arrest and barred
from taking part in the elections. Reports from around the country showed
that USDP members threatened to withhold humanitarian aid for villages or
imprison voters that did not vote for their party. It was alleged that polling staff
were hired by the USDP to stuff ballot boxes, which were not sealed to prevent
tampering with votes. In addition, the military was guaranteed at least 25 percent
of the seats, regardless of the election’s outcome. It is no surprise that former junta
leader Than Shwe’s first choice for his successor, Thin Sein, was appointed as the
first Prime Minister by the new, USDP-led government.
While China and other ASEAN nations have guarded their economic interests
in Myanmar, the West has implemented a sanctions regime to isolate Myanmar until
it improves its human rights record. Myanmar’s nationwide “democratic” elections
were an attempt to undermine the West’s sanctions regime and provide a legitimate
excuse for China and ASEAN to conduct business with the regime.
ANALYSIS
China’s policies towards North Korea and Myanmar have the blueprints of an
informal China-centered axis between the three nations. Although there is no official
alliance, China’s patronage protects its regional interests and insulates North Korea
and Myanmar from the perceived threats those regimes face from the outside world.
China leverages its relationship with North Korea and Myanmar
to counterbalance US influence in Northeast Asia and Indian influence in
South Asia. North Korea serves as defense buffer preventing US forces from
stationing along the Yalu River as could happen if the North Korea regime fell
or the US and South Korea won a war against North Korea. Similarly, now that
Chinese warships are able to dock at North Korean ports, India must pay attention
to the Chinese navy’s efforts to turn the Indian Ocean, through which most of Asia’s
crude oil and mineral resources pass, into a Chinese lake.
Myanmar’s elections serve China’s strategic aims by producing a government
perceived as both domestically and internationally legitimate, thereby reducing
international condemnation of China’s support for Myanmar. In return for China’s
backing, Myanmar grants China access to its ports, which enables China’s “string of
pearls” naval strategy and facilitates its access to energy resources in northern
Myanmar where Chinese companies are already active – often to the detriment of
politically-marginalized ethnic minority groups.
China might also have another reason to keep the North Korean and
Myanmar regimes in power. Since the Philippines and Indonesia overthrew
dictatorships in favor of democracies in 1988 and 1998, respectively, East Asia
increasingly has become an open market for democratic political change. Although
China, Myanmar, North Korea, Laos, and Vietnam remain steadfastly autocratic,
ASEAN has become a majority-democratic organization, and color revolutions have
hit China’s border nations Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, and Mongolia since the 1990s.
China’s sensitivities to political change in neighboring nations and perceived
threats to its own regime become apparent in its behavior. Beijing has kept Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo in prison, despite international protests. Rather
than acknowledge Egypt’s protests as pro-democratic, Chinese official media
referred to the movement as “saoluan,” or chaos, when the Tiananmen-like
protests started gaining momentum.
The Chinese government protects itself from external political influence, in
part, by protecting two of the last East Asian authoritarian regimes and encouraging
them to adopt a CCP-like model with a single-party military-political elite and open
economy. As a new wave of democracy may be heading East Asia’s way from Egypt,
China will probably try to shelter North Korea and Myanmar. If North Korea and
Myanmar were to open up to political reform, the Chinese regime would remain one
of the last vestiges of the one-party system in East Asia.
—
Jacob Zenn is a Global Law Scholar at Georgetown Law and is pursuing a
Certificate in Refugee Law and Humanitarian Emergencies. He previously
worked at UNHCR in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia processing Refugee Status
Determination cases for Myanmar refugees. He spent one week in North Korea
in 2007 and has a degree in International Studies from Johns Hopkins-SAIS
campus in Nanjing, China.
