WaPo on China’s Trade with North Korea, and Its Rulers’ Darkest Fears

China, which the unmitigated chutzpah we’ve come to expect of it, reassures us that it is “deeply committed” to the enforcement of UNSCR 1874.  Today, Blaine Harden of the Washington Post reports the facts that shatter that mendacious claim.  In a new report, he provides fresh evidence of China’s economic colonization of North Korea, which fits neatly with its agenda of undermining U.N. sanctions against the North.  It’s a must-read, but here’s a money quote:

As U.N. sanctions mount and business between the two Koreas fizzles, North Korea’s trade with China is setting new records. It rose 41 percent last year, while China’s share of the North’s overseas trade mushroomed to 73 percent.  [….]

By funneling hard currency to the military, Chinese enterprises seem to be insulating the confrontational core of Kim’s government from the international consequences of its behavior. “To the extent that these transactions are increasingly controlled by government entities, particularly the military, North Korea’s response to sanctions and diplomatic concerns are almost surely diminished,” said Marcus Noland, a North Korea expert at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.  [Washington Post, Blaine Harden]

What’s interesting (and mildly encouraging) is that virtually no one in our government appears to believe China’s protestations of good faith:

“They are certainly saying quite strenuously that they are deeply committed to full implementation of the provisions that are in the resolution,” the senior administration official said, referring to China.”The real test now will be in implementation,” the official said.

“We are going to obviously take their word seriously, but we’ll see in the end what they are prepared to do.”

Beijing is often criticized in the United States for its willingness to join, or carry out tough sanctions regimes against North Korea, particularly in congressional circles.

On Thursday, Republican Senator John McCain said that China had been “unhelpful, especially on the issue of North Korea.”

“I think it’s time we told the Chinese that an important part of our relationship is how they react as far as North Korea is concerned, but also as far as Iran is concerned,” the defeated 2008 presidential candidate said.  [AFP]

As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, China not only shields North Korea from the consequences of its threats to the security of the world and its atrocities against the North Korean people, China is also a co-conspirator and partner in North Korea’s proliferation industry.  The United States should identify the Chinese entities that are enabling and enriching the North Korean military and sanction them under Executive Order 13382.  It may also be time to consider adding new and greater authorities to that executive order, under which Chinese companies have been sanctioned repeatedly.

It’s often said, and Harden also repeats it, that America needs China to continue to buy our debt, but to suggest that this means we lack bargaining power ignores the symbiotic nature our relationship with China.  China still needs us at least as much as we need China, and China China can’t afford and won’t allow North Korea to disturb that symbiosis.  The United States continues to be the biggest buyer of Chinese exports, and without that export income, China’s already troubled economy won’t be able to sustain the high growth rates it must to employ a large pool of migrant workers and prevent a global recession from causing political instability in China itself.  Elsewhere, the Post notes the potential risk China faces:

Between 1988 and 1990, amid a lesser global economic slump, pro-democracy protests that appeared to inspire and energize one another broke out in Eastern Europe, Burma, China and elsewhere. Not all evolved into full-fledged revolutions, but communist regimes fell in a broad swath of countries, and the global balance of power shifted.

A similar infectiousness has shown up in subtle acts of defiance by democracy advocates around the world this week.

In China, political commentators tinted their blogs and Twitters green to show their support for Iranians disputing President Ahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection. The deaths of at least 20 people in violent clashes in Tehran have drawn comparisons online to “June 4,” the date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing in 1989. And a pointed joke about how Iranians are luckier than Chinese because sham elections are better than no elections made the rounds on the country’s vast network of Internet bulletin boards. [….]

In China, the Communist Party’s propaganda machine has worked furiously to portray the protests in Iran — already being dubbed the Green Revolution, after the Rose and Orange revolutions earlier this decade in Georgia and Ukraine — as orchestrated by the United States and other Western powers, not a grass-roots movement.  [….]
On online discussion boards this week, tens of thousands of comments about Iran were shown as deleted; most of those allowed to remain took the official party line on the elections.

China’s main message has been that this vulnerable period, with the world hit by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, is no time for a “color revolution.”

“Attempts to push the so-called color revolution toward chaos will prove very dangerous,” the state-run China Daily said in a recent editorial.  [Washington Post, Ariana Eunjung Cha]

In the end, the fragility of China’s political system also adds to our bargaining leverage over China.  If our economy worsens, our leaders may lose their jobs (but certainly not their incomes).  If China’s economy worsens enough, its leaders may lose their heads.