Chinese officials bemoan their lack of influence over the North, especially its nuclear and missile activities.
North Korea is developing both nuclear weapons and ICBMs and China has become the chief scapegoat to many Americans. President Donald Trump variously claimed that Beijing has “almost complete control over North Korea” and has done “NOTHING for us” on the issue. Many U. S. lawmakers and commentators agree with him.
Chuck DeVore of the Texas Public Policy Foundation went so far as to claim that Pyongyang “is China’s proxy, not an independent actor.” In response, he advocated announcing “that any North Korean nuclear strike will be treated as a nuclear strike from China.”
The proposal is foolish on its face. Tying the North and People’s Republic of China together would turn a potential conflict with a small, bankrupt, backward state into one with an incipient great and likely eventual super power.
More fundamentally, though, it’s a delusion to believe that Pyongyang is but a puppet of the PRC. If only that were true. Indeed, that likely is one of Kim Jong-un’s fears, and helps explain the apparent assassination of his older half-brother earlier this year. Kim Jong-nam, who lived under China’s protection in Macau, was an obvious possible frontman for a more pliable, Chinese-dominated North Korean regime.
Alas, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is under no one’s control. Which is why reliance on what Beijing dismisses as the “China responsibility theory” for the North’s nuclear program is a dead end.
The ancient Korean kingdom was a tributary state, under its northern neighbor’s influence if not formal authority. But Japan took control after its victory over China in 1895, eventually turning the peninsula into a colony.
Kim Il-sung was a guerrilla leader backed by the Soviet Union against Japan. After Japan’s defeat, the U. S. and U. S. S. R. divided Korea into separate occupation zones. Moscow placed Kim in charge in what became the DPRK. He won Joseph Stalin’s backing to forcibly reunify the peninsula, triggering the Korean War.
But after America’s intervention the Soviets were unwilling to risk a superpower confrontation with Washington. So the task of blocking U. S.-led reunification of the two Koreas fell to the PRC. After nearly three more years of war an armistice finally was reached.
