China and North Korea's pit bull alliance

[peterd]

China is, however inappropriately, exploiting North Korea as an indirect way to coerce the US. This is a geopolitical, regional, strategy - one of plausible deniability and distraction - as well as frustrating and eroding political will and scattering US military force efforts.

www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-03-150313.html

[warrior1972]

China's policy towards North Korea is based on the following:

The Chinese do not want North Korea to fall. Neither does anyone else. [/b][/u]

The reasoning is simplicity in itself.

If North Korea collapses, millions of North Korean refugees will head to either China or South Korea.

China doesn't want them.

The reasons nobody want North Korea to collapse, and reunification to take place?



1) Although China would not have the German problem of retraining millions of people who have lived in an East Germann Stalinist system into a capitalist economy, they would still have to deal with millions of impoverished North Koreans, feeding them, training them, and trying to integrate people who are racially and culturally different from them into their society.

If North Korea falls, reunification with the South would produce a capitalist Korea complete with nuclear weapons and U.S. troops on China's border.

That is unacceptable to China to say the least. (and that is a classic understatement.)

2) Japan doesn't want that reunification either. A unified, nuclear Korea that still harbors hostility going back to Japan's colonization of Korea (when the Japanese actually outlawed the speaking of the Korean language on pain of death, and abolished Korean schools, replacing them with an educational system that taught Korean children the Japanese langauge, culture, customs, and the Japanese version of history) which lasted for half a century till the end of World War II would leave Japan with yet another new, powerful rivial that wold have anything but japan's best interests in mind.

3) The Russians don't want such a reunification, either. They also share a small border with North Korea, and everything I've already stated about refugees, and a new, powerful, nuclear-armed Asian neighbor would also hold true for Russia.

4) The United States would be faced with a whole new set of obligations in aiding the newly-unified Korea, including economic aid to deal with the situation and a far more complex and expensive situation in terms of the military situation in the region.

5) And finally, although they'll never say it out loud, South Korea doesn't want North Korea to fall.


If it does, there is the distinct possibility that North Korea could end up with one of it's old Stalinist-style generals in power, who would be even more of a pain in the ass than the three dictators that North Korea has been ruled by throughout it's existence. A real, live war could break out.

And as for the other alternative? Renification?

South Korea watched the reunification of Germany following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the billions upon billions of dollars that Germany had to spend integrating the former East Germany into West Germany. South Korea is still trying to sort itself out as it is right now, let alone with the responsibility of the North Korean population and all that would entail.

So basically the bottom line is that all of these countries, China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and even South Korea, have a colossal dilemma. They don't like North Korea's regime, but they have a vested interest in not allowing that regime to fall in the name of their own interests.

That's just off of the top of my head, a result of being stationed there for a year, and seeing and hearing the realities of Korea.

Damned if they do, and damned if they don't, PeterD.

Damned if they do, and damned if they don't.