NEWS ANALYSIS : China’s Motives in North Korean Crisis Debated

Is China helping the United States stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons? Or, as some U.S. critics charge, is China using the North Korean crisis for its own benefit, to demonstrate to the world its importance in Asia?

Over the past few months, as the Clinton Administration has strived to scuttle a suspected North Korean nuclear weapons program, it has found that all roads to a solution lead through China. Not only does Beijing have veto power on the U.N. Security Council, it would be the key nation in determining whether an economic embargo against North Korea would work.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher has characterized China’s role as vital in reaching a North Korean settlement. Other senior Administration officials have acknowledged that the secret diplomatic contacts with and through Beijing have been “intensive” throughout the dispute.

Yet if Beijing’s role is important, it is also controversial, because some critics claim that China has been nursing along the North Korean issue to gain diplomatic leverage over the United States and to show the Clinton Administration how much it needs good relations with Beijing.

“China has played such an irresponsible and dangerous game on this,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, a North Korea specialist at the American Enterprise Institute.

On the surface, at least, China’s role is full of contradictions.

Chinese officials insist that they have little influence over North Korean President Kim Il Sung--and in political terms, that may be true. Yet in economic terms, China would appear to have considerable leverage. According to South Korean statistics, North Korea obtained 75% of its grain, 72% of its crude oil and 88% of its coking coal from China in 1992.

In its public statements, China regularly says that it does not want North Korea to obtain nuclear weapons. Beijing does not relish the idea of an unpredictable new nuclear power on its borders, and it fears such an emergence could prompt South Korea and Japan to counter with their own nuclear weapons programs.

Clinton Administration officials and independent analysts believe China’s opposition is sincere.

But Beijing also has repeatedly opposed any economic embargo that would apply pressure on Pyongyang. “The operational question is, what would China do to prevent North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons?” one U.S. official said. “The answer is, not much.”

China’s importance in arranging a North Korean settlement poses awkward, indeed scary, dilemmas for U.S. policy-makers, problems that have been quietly debated in Washington for months.

“If you go with an embargo (against North Korea), you would have to get the Chinese to go along,” said Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Asia. “But there would be a price to pay. The Chinese would not do this for free. Do we want to be bound to look the other way on human rights and most-favored-nation (trade status) for China? Or, alternatively, if the United States did this (embargo) without the Chinese, what if the Chinese decided to ship oil through a naval blockade? Would we sink a Chinese ship?”

During the Korean War and for decades after that, Chinese officials used the same graphic expression to characterize their relationship with North Korea: The two countries, they said, were as close as “lips and teeth.”

But even in its best days, the alliance between Beijing and Pyongyang was never really that solid. Kim, the North Korean leader, was extremely adept at playing China against the Soviet Union.

And recently, since the Soviet Union’s collapse, ties between Beijing and Pyongyang have deteriorated. To North Korea’s irritation, China began asking for cash payments at market prices for oil and other products. The change in policy hurt the already impoverished North Korean economy.

Even worse, in North Korea’s view, China established diplomatic relations with South Korea, Pyongyang’s perennial enemy. In a 1990 trip to the Chinese city of Shenyang in Manchuria, Kim reportedly met in secret with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in a frosty, unsuccessful effort to head off normalization between Beijing and Seoul.

A Chinese official in Beijing contended last week that China was not and should not be “directly involved” in the North Korean nuclear dispute. Still, he said, China has “repeatedly made use of every opportunity and channel” over the past year to tell North Korea that it should not develop nuclear weapons.

“We would not support the emergence of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula,” the official said. “But to be honest with you, China does not know whether they have the nuclear bomb or not.”

Still, the Chinese official argued against international efforts to impose an embargo on North Korea. “I’ve had a lot of contact with the Koreans,” he said. “They want very much to sit together with the big powers on an equal footing. If dialogue is on an unequal footing or sanctions are tried, it would obviously result in hurting their national pride, and this is something they would not accept.”

Beijing appears to be remarkably content to let the United States carry out negotiations with North Korea, thus having America play the lead role in what is supposed to be China’s main sphere of influence.

Richard Bush, a Democratic congressional staff member who specializes in Asian affairs, suggested that China may be letting the United States take the lead with North Korea for now, realizing that the tough job of persuasion or pressure may fall to China later on.

“The possibility or probability that China might abstain on a sanctions resolution has influence over North Korea,” Bush said. “That would represent repudiation of them (North Korea) on a global basis, even by those who were their friends, and would render them totally isolated in the eyes of the world.”

In Washington, senior Clinton Administration officials emphasize that in private talks, China has not ruled out the possibility of supporting an economic embargo against North Korea in the future. “This is, right now, a hypothetical issue, and we have not pressed them to make a decision on a hypothetical,” a top Administration policy-maker said.

Still, some Administration critics, including former officials of the George Bush Administration, say that the United States should be pressing China harder to support an embargo or other tough measures against North Korea.

“It’s time for us to push them (China),” said James R. Lilley, who served as U.S. ambassador to Beijing and later as a top Pentagon official under Bush. “You’ve got to get the Chinese in a position where they lose more than they gain. If China doesn’t play ball, you’ve got to look at the possibility of limiting the transfer of high technology to China or of having Japan cut back on soft loans to China.”

That sort of pressure from the West is exactly what China is trying to avoid. “We don’t want to get caught in the middle of this,” said a Chinese official working outside China. “When we established relations with South Korea, what could the North Koreans do except scream at us? This dispute isn’t like that. These (nuclear installations) are facilities on their own territory. What are we supposed to do, go in there (and remove them)?”

Over the past six months, the need for China’s help in the North Korean nuclear dispute has become the top priority for the Administration as it seeks to improve troubled U.S. relations with Beijing. Human rights advocates worry that the North Korean issue could cause the Administration to hold back on its criticisms of repression in China.

But a senior Administration official said China has never tried directly to get concessions from the United States in exchange for its assistance in stopping the North Korean nuclear program. “There is not the faintest indication that they (China) are using this issue for leverage over us,” the official said.

Mann reported from Washington and Tempest from Beijing.