China’s developmental peace and North Korea’s security challenges

Abstract

This chapter explores China’s ‘developmental approach’ to peace and security in the context of the country’s responses to North Korea’s range of military and human security challenges. The chapter begins with an overview of China’s distinct understanding of the ‘security–development nexus’, which views state-directed economic development with minimal external political interference and strong state control over society as the path to long-term state and regional stability and human security. The chapter then analyses how Chinese perspectives on development and security guide the country’s approach towards international peacebuilding, humanitarian response and human rights protection. The chapter concludes by demonstrating how developmental peace helps us to understand the guiding logic behind – and contradictions in – China’s ‘trade and aid’ approach to reducing the North Korean military threat and enhancing the well-being of the North Korean people.