Prediction: U.N. Resolutions, Cheonan Sinking Won’t Change China’s Support for Kim Jong Il

What will the Chinese ask Kim Jong Il during his visit?

South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, was in China as well last week, meeting with Hu on Friday to solicit support if his country sought stronger U.N. sanctions in retaliation for the Cheonan attack.

“China wants to hear North Korea’s explanation so it can determine its position,” said Yang Moo-jin, professor at the University of North Korean Studies.

China has been taking a more active role recently in mediating North Korea’s many disputes with the international community. Beijing is thought likely to press Kim on returning to the stalled six-nation talks aimed at dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program. [L.A. Times, John M. Glionna and Barbara Demick]

I don’t doubt for a moment that Lee Myung Bak already has a very good idea of exactly what happened to the Cheonan, and that he has laid the case out before the Chinese in great detail. Nor do I doubt that his goal is to convince the Chinese to stay out of the way and not excuse North Korea from the consequences of what it has done.

This will require the ChiComs to leak some hints of how firmly they expressed their displeasure to some favored reporters and columnists. They may even direct its controlled press to print some “shockingly” critical commentaries (mostly, but not entirely, in their English language editions). Myopic China-watchers who obsess about subtle shifts in the tone of such things will be dazzled. But so what? It’s not as if most of the people who read those commentaries can turn around and use that information to elect members of China’s parliament. Behind these cynical and stages displays, the flow of regime-sustaining aid to Kim Jong Il won’t change a bit.

The Joongang Ilbo posits that North Korea keeps fooling China. Nonsense. China isn’t fooled at all. On the contrary: China and North Korea keep fooling the United States and South Korea. It’s becoming increasingly naive to deny that the Chinese government sees itself as our enemy, and the fact of China’s support for North Korea in the face of provocations like the sinking of the Cheonan, repeated nuclear and missile tests, and even Chinese indulgence of North Korean proliferation speak much louder than China’s protestations of good faith. It’s just as naive that we fail to shape our own policies accordingly. I can only hope that America has bought as much influence in Beijing as Beijing has bought in Washington.

We don’t just have a North Korea problem; we have a China problem. China will continue to prop up Kim Jong Il’s regime until that policy becomes linked to negative consequences for its own internal stability and foreign interests.