China and its Discontents

This morning Situation Report quoted Bonnie Glaser on Gen. Dempsey’s upcoming trip to China to meet the new Chief of the PLA General Staff Fang Fenghui:

The CSIS’ Bonnie Glaser tells Situation Report that Dempsey will take advantage of an increasingly engaging military-to-military relationship with China. She thinks Dempsey will be talking with the PLA about nuclear and cyber issues and also, of course, about Korea. “I’m pretty sure that one of the things that will be discussed is a very long desire to try to launch a dialogue with the Chinese about the potential for instability in North Korea and what the responses might be,” she said. “The potential for chaos, insecure WMD facilities and of course the risk” of a conflict on the Korean Peninsula between the Republic of Korea, the U.S. and the Chinese are all top concerns. Past attempts to address the potential failure of the North Korean regime have failed. But now may be the time because the Chinese have grown impatient at North Korea’s noise-making, and talking with the U.S. could send a strong signal to the North Korean leader, she said.

“I think that what we have now is a window of opportunity with China’s high level of frustration with the North Koreans and their provocations,” she said.

It would be a very good thing if this were true. Whereas China only recently became willing to credibly enforce sanctions on its erstwhile ally, it has so far not engaged in crisis planning with the U.S. over potential North Korean instability. At some point a crisis on the Korean peninsula will rear its head, war will break out, and the DPRK will collapse, and this lack of joint-planning will make an already-bad situation ten times worse. If a crisis does occur, my bet is that the PLA will cross the Yalu River in order to secure their borders, prevent a massive flow of people into China, secure WMDs, and stabilize the area. What will be different from the original Korean War will be that, even though both the U.S. and China will be heavily involved in North Korea, neither side will want nor intend conflict with the other. This makes planning and communication essential.

The China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) is about to commence a copper mine at Mes Aynak, Afghanistan: 

This site is called Mes Aynak and is nothing short of awe-inspiring: a massive walled-in Buddhist city featuring massive temples, monasteries, and thousands of Buddhist statues that managed to survive looters and the Taliban. Holding a key position on the Silk Road, Mes Aynak was also an international hub for traders and pilgrims from all over Asia.

Hundreds of fragile manuscripts detailing daily life at the site are still yet to be excavated. Beneath the Buddhist dwellings is an even older yet-unearthed Bronze age site indicated by several recent archaeological findings.

Mes Aynak is set for destruction at the end of December 2012. All of the temples, monasteries, statues as well as the Bronze age material will all be destroyed by a Chinese government-owned company called China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC). Six villages and the mountain range will also be destroyed to create a massive open-pit style copper mine.

The $3 billion mining deal, signed in 2007, represents the largest foreign investment in Afghanistan’s history.

Source: Xinhua

Meanwhile, Zhou Yongkang, Politburo Standing Committee member, head of the Politics and Law Commission/law enforcement, and supposed erstwhile ally of Bo Xilai (tip: be highly skeptical of sensationalist news coming out of Taiwan or the Falun Gong) just made a surprise visit to Afghanistan. Is there a direct connection? Hard to say.

But the mining deal and Zhou Yongkang’s surprise visit is emblematic of a few things relevant to Chinese foreign policy in Central Asia, and the developing world in general. China’s interests in Afghanistan and the rest of Central Asia involve: co-opting corrupt, crony capitalist elites in neighboring authoritarian states so that Chinese state-owned corporations (and Chinese workers, protected by armed Chinese security guards) can extract resources; developing alternative supply chains to the Persian Gulf-Indian Ocean-Malacca Straits shipping route, especially by building oil pipelines from Kazakhstan into Xinjiang; and cooperating with said Central Asian states (especially through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) to fight terrorism aimed at splitting Xinjiang from China. China’s interests in Africa and other parts of the developing world are similar, minus the fighting terrorism part.

In my mind, all of this very invasive economic activity calls into question the entire bedrock of Chinese foreign policy: non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs. Apparently, MCC’s actions have incited Afghani villagers near Anyak to partner with the Taliban to attack the mine and the archaeologists still working to preserve the Buddhist site. China, through its state-owned enterprises (SOEs), simultaneously lends military support to various odious regimes (including Sudan, Iran, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, obviously North Korea, and to some extent, although this is now changing, Burma), enriches the elites of those and other countries with vast resource extraction deals, and screws over locals by almost exclusively employing imported Chinese workers and spoiling the local environment. In return, the Chinese compensate in-country locals with a few infrastructure projects, worth far less in proportion to the benefit China accrues from such deals. China cannot hide behind any facade–China’s SOEs are implements of Chinese foreign policy.

The U.S. and other interested partners need to work more actively to call out not only China’s abusive actions in the developing world, but also this obvious contradiction in China’s foreign policy. China is particularly weak ideologically on this front, given that its policy of non-interference aims to thwart others who would interfere in China’s own internal affairs. Forcing China to explain its actions and apparent hypocrisy would:

1. Strengthen the U.S. case for Chinese participation in greater sanctions against Iran (which it apparently has not been successful at doing).
2. Reduce threats to U.S. interests and human rights generally through squeezing supply chains to China’s client states.
3. Improve the competitive advantage of U.S. corporations in bidding against Chinese SOEs. If U.S. corporations can present themselves as environmentally-friendly and ethically/socially-responsible in an environment where developing countries are pressured to value those things, then they can win contracts even when Chinese SOEs underbid them. This could possibly improve the U.S. domestic economy (unless most profits are held overseas).
4. Generally improve U.S. relations with the developing world, and set up a stark contrast between U.S. and Chinese actions in the minds of the Global South. U.S.-China relations are not necessarily zero-sum, but in Africa and elsewhere, every resources-for-infrastructure deal the Chinese sign is a deal not made by the U.S.. The Chinese, with the help of locally-based state-owned media such as Xinhua and CCTV, are telling one narrative to the populations of their trading partners. We can tell a different narrative, especially if our actions respect the environment, improve the local economy, and maintain local culture.
5. And possibly (however unlikely), push China to revise its stated foreign policy to align with its actual practices, which would remove the ideological pretense behind its arguments on a whole host of issues, including humanitarian interventions, territorial disputes, and U.S. policies in East Asia.

The U.S. should use the U.N. as an outlet and work with human rights and minerals-certification NGOs, but it must also speak to the American domestic audience. Mark Landler’s recent piece in the New York Times describes the Obama administration’s tougher stance on China, especially in regards to US-China trade and the Pivot to Asia. The Obama administration needs to add this issue to the growing list of arguments made in front of domestic audiences, because average Americans can also play a pivotal role in an influence campaign (and it would of course also improve President Obama’s reelection chances).

Even if China doesn’t revise its foreign policy wholesale (which again, is nigh impossible in the short term), the U.S. can advance its interests in credible and measurable ways. Not to call China out on its hypocrisy abroad would be a huge missed opportunity.

Ian Bremmer, President of the Eurasia Group, gives a great interview at the World Economic Forum blog, summarizing the possibilities for conflict between the U.S. and China. Currency adjustments, cybersecurity, trade disagreements, and North Korea are all mentioned, although China’s naval expansion and relations with Burma, Iran, and various states in Africa are all suspiciously left out. This, however, will never happen:

If the Chinese suddenly decide, we are moving away from the dollar and into the euro, but we are going to demand strong conditions, political and economical conditionality in return for us bailing these guys out. That could be the end of NATO. This would certainly be the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and would completely change the way we think about global geopolitics.

I cannot accept this will ever happen. NATO members would never accept any conditions that would result in the breakup of NATO. That’s because these conditions wouldn’t just result in the breakup of NATO–it would mean a significant loss of trust between the U.S. and its European allies. Who would Europe depend on then? China? That’s ludicrous.

Over an official lunch in late February, a top South Korean diplomat confidently told the American ambassador, Kathleen Stephens, that the fall would come “two to three years” after the death of Kim Jong-il, the country’s ailing leader, Ms. Stephens later cabled Washington. A new, younger generation of Chinese leaders “would be comfortable with a reunited Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the United States in a benign alliance,” the diplomat, Chun Yung-woo, predicted.

That is a bold prediction – and the Guardian (here and here) is much more direct than the New York Times in claiming this. I agree with Stephen Walt that in regards to China and North Korea, the embassy cables are much more of a wash than they are portrayed as (what an ambassador says to another ambassador is not necessarily the discussion the Politburo Standing Committee is having). Even assuming Kim Jong-eun or the military cabal is somehow incapable of successfully negotiating the power transfer, there would need to be some pretty astounding diplomacy for China to be comfortable with a unified Korea. The entire idea behind supporting a divided peninsula from China’s perspective is that, regardless of how odious the North Korean regime is (and it is a serious headache to China), any unbalancing of the status quo will ultimately hurt China’s interests. Any US or NATO military presence above the DMZ and the floods of North Korean refugees, as the article notes, would be untenable. But that’s not all.

An ascendant, unified Korea could not be a benign ally of the US, according to certain Chinese viewpoints. Already, China is boxed in on all sides by countries closely-partnered with the US: South Korea (of course), Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, and India. Unification means a great deal psychologically. A unified Korea would have subtle, but greatly-expanded persuasive powers on the international stage. I hope that, as the Guardian suggests, younger leaders are no longer concerned about this, and want to work with both Korea and the US in a mutually beneficial manner. But that’s not a given.

The goal, then, is to make unification in China’s interest. China might not be able to prevent it – the regime might slide so quickly as to be unsalvageable (and China certainly is never going to war over North Korea again). But the US and Korea should want China to recognize the unified state on its own terms. Not consulting the Chinese would harm our relations with them on all fronts. Incentives for Chinese investment in Korea would help – so would significantly paring back American military presence on the peninsula. (Why, in a post-North Korean world, would we even need military bases there? Is war with China a realistic threat in this day and age? And besides, we always have Japan) We could even couple some of the things China wants with some of our own priorities (on trade, fiscal policy, climate change, energy policy, you name it). I have a feeling that this is not a zero-sum negotiation in which China and the US negotiate, tit-for-tat. Instead, an outcome in which both sides are satisfied can only be positive.

I’m having a hard time imagining how painful the reunification process would be. The North Korean state, if it did merge with the South, would probably go down in flames. The state is already a wreck with food shortages and the like, but without even minimal state assistance many more would probably starve. The military would suddenly be a loose cannon – and the nuclear material currently lying around Yongbyon would be up for grabs. Of course, South Korea and the United States have certainly drawn up coordinated response plans to rush into the vacuum when needed, and have practiced plenty of military scenarios (the current exercise with the two countries’ navies being conducted right now included). But it still boggles the mind.

From Steve Clemons:

Information has reached me that some USAF personnel have been put on 24 hour deployment alert with regard to North Korea. I don’t know how regular or irregular that is — but know that despite a lot of tension in the country since 9/11, my sources have not been put on such alert before. The USAF has denied that it has changed its alert status in comments to other journalist friends of mine — but the actual personnel beg to differ.

When I first heard the news that North Korea had shelled an island across the DMZ, I thought this disturbing provocation seemed more serious than previous attacks. Let’s hope this does not escalate.