China’s Perplexing Burden of History on the Korean Peninsula and Beyond

Chinese and South Korean delegations at the 2016 G20 Summit discussing THAAD. Photo from Hankyoreh.

In 2012, shortly after stepping into his position as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the highest seat of authority in the political structure of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), soon-to-be President Xi Jinping outlined his vision for the future: “to push forward the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and [to] strive to achieve the Chinese dream of a great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation." For Xi, among other things, this “Chinese dream” is predicated on elevating the nation’s presence on the international stage. In the wake of the Financial Crisis of 2008, the PRC emerged surprisingly unscathed in comparison to the rest of the world. To the Chinese people, this was a sign. At long last, after nearly 200 years in the shadows, after the horrors of “the Century of Humiliation,” China’s time to take its proper place as a global power had come. Yet, in this post-Financial Crisis world, when it comes to the Korean Peninsula, it seems as if China is still stuck in the past. 

China’s position with regards to North and South Korea is perplexing, to say the least. In 2019, South Korea (ROK) was China’s fourth-largest export market, its largest import source, and its third-largest trading partner. Moreover, China’s trade with South Korea is more than 70 times that of its trade with North Korea (DPRK). When it comes to nuclear non-proliferation, North Korea’s unprecedented belligerence as a rogue nuclear state has not only repeatedly embarrassed its older brother but has also reached a point of critically threatening the PRC’s national security and robust economic relationship with the South. It has driven South Korea closer to Japan and the U.S. in a way that threatens to undermine the People’s Liberation Army’s massive military modernization effort. As China’s only formal ally, North Korea has unquestionably become a strain on Xi’s “Chinese dream.” So, why does the PRC continue to stick up for its obnoxious younger brother at the expense of not only itself but also its relations with the North Koreans’ more prosperous twin? The answer lies in top officials’ perception of the past. 

Many Chinese claim that as early as 37 BCE, the northern Korean kingdom of Goguryeo played an important role as a tributary state along the Han Dynasty’s periphery. While this has been a sore spot in Sino-Korean relations, the fact remains, China and the Korean Peninsula have been linked, at some level, on the timescale of civilizations. In the wake of the 1st Opium War and the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, the Qing Dynasty would be driven to its grave by Western Imperialism, and the remaining nationalist Republic of China would be tormented by an aggressive Imperial Japan until 1945, just years before its own demise at the hands of the CCP. However, this period of decline resulting from Western Imperialism, dubbed “the Century of Humiliation” in China, was not a unique Chinese experience. In fact, it is the foundational basis for the PRC-DPRK relationship today. After being annexed by Japan in 1910, Korea would spend the next 35 years being subjected to atrocity after atrocity, and the shared experience of Japanese Imperialism and the inviolable sense of anticolonial nationalism that has since taken root in both China and North Korea has tightly bound the two states together. 

Furthermore, everytime the region that is now North Korea has gone into a period of flux, China’s sovereignty has been threatened. In 1895, Japanese maneuvering in northern Korea would lead to China’s defeat and the unequal Treaty of Shimonoseki. A destabilized northern Korea would serve as the staging ground for Japan’s invasion of Manchuria prior to World War II. Finally, conflict on the Peninsula in 1950, during the Korean War, would not only cost the lives of 800,000 Chinese soldiers but would also cost the CCP Taiwan. Understanding the CCP’s historically-driven fear of North Korean instability and their shared ideological sense of anti-imperialist nationalism is the first step in understanding the contradictory tensions in the PRC’s relationship with the Peninsula today. 

Despite the aforementioned massive toll it would ultimately take on the PRC, the Korean War is perceived by the Chinese public as a crucible that the North Koreans and the Chinese went through together, emerging on the other side bonded by blood. From then on, Kim Il-sung would deftly work to secure Chinese aid and support throughout the Cold War by serving as an ideological partner during the Sino-Soviet split and the first step in Mao’s quest to win over the hearts and minds of third-world communists. 

Interestingly enough, this trend would begin to reverse itself almost immediately after Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power. After announcing his policy of “reform and opening up” in 1978, the relationship between the PRC and the ROK immediately started to thaw, much to the DPRK’s consternation. South Korea, previously deemed a US puppet state meant to help encircle China, suddenly became an increasingly important economic outlet and development model. Over the next decade through a mixture of sports diplomacy and Seoul’s policy of Nordpolitik, trade with South Korea would go from practically non-existent to $900 million in 1993, one year after the normalization of relations between the PRC and the ROK. 

At the same time, China would continuously distance itself from North Korea, for in Deng’s vision of economic growth, North Korea was merely deadweight loss in comparison to the plethora of economic incentives driving China towards the ROK. Nuclear non-proliferation would not help the DPRK’s cause. The 1994 North Korean Nuclear Crisis would be the impetus for the strengthening of the US-Japan security alliance, driving China to pursue a new policy of multilateralism that excluded North Korea and only drew it closer to South Korea. Not only did China take up a leading role in the Six Party Talks to address nuclear armament in North Korea, but it would also sign on to UN Security Council Resolution 1718, calling for extensive sanctions on the DPRK. By 2008, South Korea’s relationship with the PRC had been elevated to the status of a “Strategic Cooperative Partnership.” 

On March 26, 2010, an ROK naval vessel, Cheonan, was sunk by an unknown underwater explosion, resulting in the death of 46 South Koreans, the worst loss of life in such a situation since the Korean War. Yet, when the subsequent investigation found the DPRK responsible, China remained noticeably silent. In November, when North Korea shelled Yeonpyeong Island, a small South Korean island just off of its coast, in broad daylight, Beijing did nothing more than simply call for calm and stability. 

In response to an unprecedented level of North Korean nuclear provocations in 2016, Seoul decided to allow the US to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense ballistic missile systems (THAAD) in South Korea. It would take 8 months before the PRC would reach out to North Korea to pursue “freeze for freeze” diplomacy. None of this came before the PRC was forced to retaliate against the ROK’s THAAD deployment by hampering the operations of South Korean-owned conglomerates LG, Lotte, and Samsung in China and cancelling the commercial ventures of various K-pop stars as well. Why? What had happened in the interim since South Korea’s elevation to “Strategic Cooperative Partnership” status to warrant such a reversal in Chinese policy at its own national security and economic expense?

The answer lies not in a sudden development in PRC-South Korea relations, but rather in the CCP’s changing perception of the past and its circumstances with regards to North Korea, since the Financial Crisis. In the summer of 2008, Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke, rendering Beijing more worried about DPRK domestic stability than it had in years. When Kim Jong-il finally died in 2011, and the young, inexperienced Kim Jong-un took over, the CCP was hardly reassured. In tandem with its worries about North Korean stability, the CCP had also grown increasingly worried about social stability within the PRC itself, as the Financial Crisis undercut global export and capital markets, threatening China’s ability to maintain growth and create jobs. As the decade progressed, it became clear that CCP fears were not unfounded. The 2012 anti-Japan protests would quickly turn against the government, and as a result of the 2014 and 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations, the political state in Hong Kong has never been more precarious. 

In the post-Financial Crisis world, one of the two main legs of CCP legitimacy, social stability, has clearly been undercut, so for an authoritarian regime whose number one priority is maintaining absolute control, it is only natural for the CCP to lean on its other remaining leg, nationalism. Therefore, how can the CCP afford to back down to international pressure to reign in North Korea’s nuclear program when the source of that pressure is, among others, Japan and the US, two old, remnant Western Imperialist powers from the “Century of Humiliation?” 

Equally important domestically is the CCP’s need to maintain regime continuity back to the PRC’s founding in 1949 without letting the failures of Mao stain the legitimacy of its authority today. In light of the atrocities of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the CCP’s narrative that under Mao’s leadership the PRC was able to successfully stand up to Western imperialists during the Korean War has served as its final bastion in preserving Mao’s reputation as a great leader. Today, the bond forged in blood with the DPRK under Mao’s leadership remains in the form of the PRC’s continued support for and protection of its only true ally. Undermining that support and allowing the regime to succumb to international pressure would therefore be the same as admitting to Mao’s total failure as a leader.

Even more straightforward than this analysis of the PRC’s need to maintain Mao’s reputation and nationalistic resolve in the face of international pressure and DPRK instability is the fact that DPRK instability, in and of itself, carries serious historical implications. As described above, North Korean instability has almost always been a harbinger of Chinese decline, so for Xi Jinping, whose “Chinese dream” is predicated on the PRC’s reclaiming its former glory, this has made US pressure on a young and volatile Kim Jong-un a serious concern. Moreover, purely from a realpolitik standpoint, there are many arguments for how a North Korean collapse could seriously hurt PRC domestic stability today.

An unstable DPRK driven to collapse by international sanctions would throw the surrounding Indo-Pacific region into an unprecedented, unpredictable state. For example, were the DPRK regime to fail, China, its closest ally, would face an unprecedented influx of refugees that would threaten to overwhelm the regional Chinese economy and tax the practically non-existent social safety there much beyond its current capacity. The PRC, now at the center of the transnational production chain and in the midst of expanding its naval presence in the region, has a significant stake in maintaining the region’s stability and the status quo. This stake is only reinforced by historical fears that the PRC needs to maintain North Korea as a buffer state lest the ROK once again serve as a conduit for US maneuvering like during the Korean War.

So, it is clear, that “what has happened” since 2008 has been a restructuring of the CCP’s perceptions of its role on the Korean Peninsula away from emphasizing the “peaceful rise” and absolute focus on economic growth that defined the reform program launched by Deng Xiaoping to a more historically driven approach where postcolonial nationalism and fears from the “Century of Humiliation” and the Mao years have resurfaced in light of both DPRK and PRC instability. But, at the crux of the PRC’s complicated relationship with North Korea and South Korea today lies the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. Simply put, the PRC would not be in the perplexing situation that it is in today if it were not for the tensions that DPRK nuclear belligerence begets. Nuclear non-proliferation does not seem like it should be a controversial issue for the PRC. China has had nuclear weapons since 1964, and given Xi’s aim to solidify China’s place on the world stage, one would think that preventing other nations from developing similar capabilities would fit into his dream. So, how can the US and its other regional allies possibly engage China on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation in a productive way? 

The solution I propose is one rooted in the idea of deterrence theory: incentivizing action through a mix of both credible threats and credible assurances. Firstly, the US has to understand the role that the deeply rooted nexus between the “Century of Humiliation” and CCP legitimacy plays in the Party’s foreign policy calculations, for one of the two main pillars of CCP authority lies in its commitment to anti-imperialist nationalism around the world. With that in mind, the US must repeatedly reemphasize its commitment to non-intervention when seeking to engage China constructively on nuclear non-proliferation, especially with the specter of Quaddafi’s Libya still looming relatively fresh in the PRC’s mind. Despite Mummar Quaddafi’s cooperation with the Obama administration and his voluntary decision to end Libya’s nuclear program, Washington’s push for regime change and Quaddafi’s subsequent execution has provided China with the opportunity to leverage its role in denuclearizing North Korea as a way to call out US imperialist aggressiveness. The US must also repeatedly reassure China of the security of its vested economic interests given that Deng Xiaoping’s prioritization of economic growth is still a top priority for the PRC. However, there is a fine line between making necessary assurances and coming off as lacking resolve. Joint military posturing with regional allies, especially, should be a go-to card in Biden’s China playbook. Take for example the effectiveness that joint US-ROK naval exercises in the Yellow Sea played in finally getting China to respond to the North Korean nuclear crisis of 2010. 

But, most importantly, the Biden administration must understand that Xi’s “Chinese dream” is not purely a vision for the future but also a reflection of his perception of the past. It is a call to finish what Deng Xiaoping started in 1978 with the Belt-and-Road Initiative. It is a pledge to reemerge from the “Century of Humiliation” as a rising global power and a promise to honor Mao’s legacy of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The first step in any constructive US relationship with China is promising to help support this vision while actively seeking to undermine it as well.

Rohil Sabherwal (CC’24) is a senior editor for CPR studying Economics, Political Science, and East Asian Studies (Korean). Outside of CPR, you can find him drinking bubble tea, watching nature documentaries, and scrolling endlessly through TikTok.