Painful Lessons, Reversing Practices, and Ongoing Limitations: China Facing North Korea since 2003

Abstract

Since 2002, the North Korean nuclear issue has remained extremely complex, preoccupying the major powers in Northeast Asia—the United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea, as well as China. Among the complicating factors are concerns about China’s behavior, which has defied simple, stereotypical, and static explanations. Indeed, more than ten years after China’s remarkable engagement in international efforts to try to denuclearize North Korea—efforts that played such a vital role in stabilizing the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia—almost no one within or outside China regards its protracted endeavor over the problem as something entirely positive or inspiring. This is remarkable, and even somewhat surprising, in the context of China’s dramatic rise as a great power and in consideration of the relatively great length of time China has had to experiment, revise, and develop its policies based on practice and learning. If one focuses on the strategic perspective and the relationship between means and ends, as well as on the relationship between costs and effectiveness, one can hardly give the quality of China’s related policy a high assessment.