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China’s Disgrace

Beijing reacts with helpless anger to North Korea’s new nuclear test. How long can China stand by and watch Kim Jong-un’s nuclear megalomania?

By Matthias Nass

It was probably not a hydrogen bomb that North Korea tested on January 6th; the force of the subterranean explosion was too weak. Instead, Dictator Kim Jong-un is alleged to have given the order for the detonation of a “normal” atom bomb, which is bad enough.

There are many horrible regimes on this earth, but the most terrible of all rules from Pyongyang. Two years ago, UN investigators documented the human rights abuses for which North Korea is responsible. These injustices cry to high heaven, and the guilty parties should, as the UN commission suggested, face the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

This country has now established itself as an atomic power. The recent test over these last weeks was already the fourth, preceded by previous attempts in 2006, 2009 and 2013. North Korea has access to enriched uranium, as well as to plutonium. It has already tested long range missiles. Although the country does not yet seem able to miniaturize nuclear warheads to rocket size, and does not currently possess an ICBM with which it could reach the United States, that all seems to be just a matter of time.

If it continues down this path, North Korea could become a great threat to peace and security. For over two decades, the world powers have attempted to stop the North Korean nuclear program. To no avail. Why has the diplomacy that succeeded in Iran failed in North Korea? I would argue that there are three reasons.

The first is that North Korea is a totalitarian state, pure and simple. Power is concentrated in the hands of a dictator and his cadres. Unlike Iran, there is no Parliament to serve as counterbalance, no oppositional voice of public opinion. With incredible brutality and complete control, the regime has closed the country off against the outside world. No diplomacy has succeeded in penetrating this armor.

Second, North Korea practices a radical form of autarchy. Its economy is based not on trade, but on the exploitation of its own citizenry. Sanctions can do nothing to bring the regime into line. The result would only be more privation, more misery, more hunger.

The country still needs several indispensable commodities, however, which brings us to the third reason that North Korea has resisted all pressure. China, despite its anger at its unpredictable neighbor, has never stopped exporting oil and other provisions there. Hence the ineffectuality of the UN Security Council’s previous resolutions to sanction the country.

Beijing is playing both sides. In 2013 it strongly criticized North Korea’s nuclear test and voted in the Security Council to sanction the country. But then it put on a friendly face once more and, this past fall, sent a member of the Politburo to Pyongyang. There, the high official sat beside Kim at the military parade for the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the Labor Party.

Beijing does not want North Korea to have a nuclear weapon. What it wants even less, though, is a collapse of the dictatorship and a re-united North Korea to emerge at its border, allied with America. The Kim regime is shamelessly exploiting China’s interests. Kim even had his uncle executed, because the elder Kim struck the leader as too independent and too power-hungry. That his uncle was Beijing’s trusted man in Pyongyang did not bother Kim in the least. Why should it have? China let him get away with it.

A world power–and that is what China wants to be–does not let itself be pushed around like this. Since the six-power talks fell apart seven years ago, Beijing’s diplomacy has proven itself unable to bring Pyongyang back to the negotiation table. A country that looks only to its blinkered interests still has a long way to go before it can play a political role on the international stage befitting its economic importance.

Even at the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, China has shown little interest in shaping the final terms. In any case, it did not stand in the way of a solution. With respect to North Korea, however, it is culpably neglecting its proportionately larger responsibility. China’s reputation and influence are the first victims of Kim’s nuclear megalomania.

 

This article is part of a regular series of contributions from Matthias Nass for the Bucerius network. Matthias Nass began his career with ZEIT in 1983, and from 1998 to 2010 served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief. Since 2011, he has served as Chief International Correspondent for the newspaper. His area of expertise is foreign and security policy. This article was originally published in ZEIT Online. All opinions expressed belong solely to the author and are not the official position of any of the Bucerius Institutions.