Bonnie Glaser, Scott Snyder and John S. Park » Chinese Debates on North Korea

The majority favors retaining the treaty, but even those who adopt this position say that the Chinese government welcomes its ambiguity, which leaves both Pyongyang and Washington uncertain about the extent of China’s support in a conflict. According to a Chinese scholar, this ambiguity strengthens deterrence.

Even if China were to modify or abandon the treaty, circumstances might arise that would require the Chinese to dispatch forces across the border into North Korea. Contingency plans exist to restore stability in the event that the country devolves into chaos – a scenario that Beijing neither hopes for nor predicts is likely. If intervention is deemed necessary, China’s strong preference is to join a multilateral response team under United Nations auspices, but it is prepared to act unilaterally if the international community does not respond in time.

A third issue being debated, though only acknowledged by a small number of Chinese experts, concerns the likelihood of a rapid improvement in U.S.-North Korean relations and how such a development would affect Chinese interests. If asked, most officials and institute researchers insist that increased bilateral U.S.-DPRK contacts are beneficial to the denuclearization process and not contrary to Chinese interests. Probing questions from Chinese scholars about how far and how fast U.S.-DPRK relations will develop betray concerns, however. In the near-term, the Chinese worry that their role in the Six-Party Talks will be circumscribed. However, their deeper and long run concern is strategic – that the U.S. and North Korea will forge a closer relationship that will adversely affect Chinese interests.

Some Chinese experts even worry that Washington and Pyongyang will cut a deal that will permit North Korea to keep its nuclear weapons in exchange for concessions by the DPRK. A leading Chinese analyst suggested, for example, that the DPRK could pledge to not proliferate and give up long-range nuclear missiles in return for U.S. acceptance of the country as a nuclear weapons state. In the event that the U.S. strikes a separate deal with North Korea that is not embedded in the six-party process, Beijing would be isolated in its insistence that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons and Sino-DPRK relations would be severely impaired. Chinese analysts vividly recall that the U.S. pressed Beijing to impose great pressure on India after its nuclear test in 1998, but then reversed its position and condoned India’s nuclear program, leaving China hanging out to dry. China subsequently devoted two years to mending its ties with India.

Bonnie Glaser (bglaser@csis.org) is senior associate at the Pacific Forum and at CSIS in Washington, D.C. Scott Snyder (snyderSA@aol.com) is a senior associate for the Pacific Forum CSIS and the Asia Foundation. John S. Park (jpark@usip.org) is the director for the Korea Working Group at the U.S. Institute of Peace. This article is taken from “Keeping an Eye on an Unruly Neighbor: Chinese Views of Economic Reform and Stability in North Korea ,” a report of discussions with North Korea specialists during a Center for Strategic and International Studies-USIP delegation visit to the People’s Republic of China.