China Cleaves Northeast Asia in Two, 2013-2016

What was the meaning of Xi Jinping’s Sunnylands offer to Barack Obama in 2013? It revealed far more than many recognized. Xi called for a “new model of major power relations,” implying a G2 understanding that left vague which other great powers would belong in the elite club.¹ He reiterated his view that “the vast Pacific Ocean has enough space for the two large countries of China and the United States.”² Implicitly, that could mean two spheres of influence, seeking Washington’s recognition of a Sinocentric zone on the Asian side. Xi’s approaches to Russia, Japan, South and North Korea, and Asia’s southern tier over the following three years added substance to this interpretation. At Xi’s disposal were Obama’s delayed recognition of China’s strategy, limited awareness in the region of the consequences of rising economic vulnerability to China, overoptimism that the post-Cold War order’s peace and stability mantra would stick, and wariness of bringing ideological issues to the fore as if that would lead to a new cold war. By 2016, the situation was looking quite different, and Xi was prepared to tip his hand further.

China’s position in Northeast Asia was weak when Xi took power. Relations with Japan were at their nadir, following the clash over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands that erupted in 2012, when China decided to intensify pressure using fishing boats and other means. Relations with South Korea remained poor, as China kept demonizing Lee Myung-bak, while the new North Korean leader Kim Jong-un stayed aloof from Chinese aspirations. Even the Sino-Russian relationship seemed to fall far short of China’s expectations, as Vladimir Putin had recently reclaimed the presidency with talk of a “Turn to the East” showcasing multipolarity rather than the bilateral relationship. The idea that Beijing could bring Northeast Asia into its fold seemed far-fetched, however much Xi Jinping sought a Sinocentric order there as one way to realize his promised “China Dream” and set aside “passive diplomacy” as he pursued “equal dialogue” with the US.

With Obama wary of a G2, which Japan and others deemed to be aimed against US alliances, South Korea loomed as the lowest hanging fruit in Northeast Asia. Kim Jong-un had alienated Xi by murdering his uncle, who had operated as a liaison with China. Overtures to Seoul would put him on guard. In turn, Park Geun-hye was inaugurated in Seoul, trumpeting her Sinophile credentials and promising “trustpolitik” with North Korea requiring Xi Jinping’s help. Long demonized in China, Abe Shinzo took office proclaiming a “proactive” foreign policy, but this aroused scant interest in Beijing, given his early Yasukuni Shrine visit and other nationalist behavior. In 2013 Putin had sought to buttress Russia’s control over Central Asia, establishing the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), in what was seen as one more effort to keep China at a distance there. Xi’s approach was: engage Obama further, be patient with Kim, pressure Putin by raising the stakes, pin down Abe, and tantalize Park with a “honeymoon” but no marriage.

Three keywords served Xi’s outreach strategy. For Park and Obama “denuclearization” gave the impression in 2013-16, as it had earlier, that China prioritized the removal of nuclear and missile armaments from North Korea, even to the point that if Pyongyang resisted it would apply pressure and tilt toward Seoul. Left obscure was the hierarchy of China’s objectives for the North and the South. For Obama, “global challenges” served as an enticement for working together on climate change, etc. while downplaying concerns over the regional and bilateral issues that could have sent relations onto a downward spiral. Finally, for Putin, “multipolarity” gave him face to set aside asymmetrical bilateral relations in the hope that China would join in forging an order of Asia of multiple poles and treat Russia as one pole in the Grand Strategic Triangle with the United States. Such language concealed China’s agenda for these countries.  

By the end of 2016, the hollowness of the three key terms had been exposed. The following sections show what Xi Jinping really wanted from Seoul and how “denuclearization” remained a secondary objective with Pyongyang. Modest Chinese cooperation on “global challenges” no longer obscured the seriousness of China’s assertive behavior, as recognized by Obama and by the mainstream in both US political parties by 2016. Finally, Xi continued to pay lip-service to “multipolarity” with Russia, accepting Putin’s “Greater Eurasian Partnership” as a vehicle for it, even as he undermined its essence. Xi had made substantial progress in separating the old socialist camp from the US alliance network, in effect cleaving Northeast Asia into two, while appealing for economic integration with all as the basis for eventual China-led regionalism.

In response to purported efforts of others to split the region and interfere with China’s plans for regional integration, China reinforced its economic centrality, while also acknowledging a Eurasian framework. Steeped in assumptions about increasing bipolarity and enduring contrasts of Chinese and Western historical logic, China plotted how to become the center of Asia as US policies failed.³ Key to its geopolitical reasoning was an essentialist contrast of Chinese and Western civilizations.⁴ From the outset of his leadership, Xi considered security to dwarf other issues and encompassed nearly everything under it, including economics, technology, culture, and society. Prioritizing the fight against “color revolutions” at home and abroad, Xi trumpeted his partnership with Putin. 

Chinese explanations of national motives ignored realist concerns and faulted psychological failings in three Northeast Asian actors but not the other three. Washington’s obsession with hegemony and containment stemmed from Cold War mentality. Tokyo’s drive to break free of the postwar era and threaten others as a military great power derived from prewar militarism. Seoul’s slavish backing of US containment is steeped in resentment of China rooted in historical ingratitude. In contrast, Beijing defensively protects its national interests and seeks win-win outcomes and a natural course of regional integration. Moscow would presumably agree, and Pyongyang could be kept on a short leash until it did too. Seoul became the obvious target.

Xi Jinping quickly consolidated enormous power, including leading a new State Security Committee overseeing domestic and foreign matters. If the message to outsiders was that his “China Dream” is further “peaceful development,” requiring a stable external environment with “win-win” outcomes abroad,⁵ the message at home was of a civilization rising through authoritarian one-party control to stand up to the West, finally reversing historical humiliations and marching toward Sinocentrism. Denying that China had any strategy for altering the status quo, unlike the US, Japan, and South Korea, writers proceeded to outline such a strategy for Northeast Asia, state-by-state.

Chinese Strategic Thinking toward Russia, 2013-16

Under Xi Jinping, diplomacy with Russia grew more active than with any other country, a sign of its significance. It was not easygoing in 2013, reflected in the analyses of Zhao Huasheng, warning that Russians were standing in the way of much closer relations even as ties were good. They talked of unbalanced development, reminiscent of old “China threat” hysteria. In supporting improved ties, they also called for balancing China in Asia, which China quieted by agreeing to multipolarity. Trust must be enhanced along with an agenda to prevent slippage. If no longer expressing deference to Russia in Central Asia, China could accommodate it, joining in opposing the “color revolutions” sought by the West and boosting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) under joint leadership.⁶ Zhao made clear that Russia should choose China in its “Turn to the East” as Obama and Abe were pressuring it and China in a more polarized world. Insisting that China and Russia are defending the Yalta system, while the US and Japan are plotting a strategy to overturn that order, he recalled the Cold War order as uniting Beijing and Moscow, ignoring the Sino-Soviet split and harking back to the 1950s alliance heyday.

Zhao raises four responses to Russian psychology: (1) China must play down long-term aims to reassure Moscow it will not be dragged into Sino-US conflicts, indicating that Moscow sought more balance in the Grand Strategic Triangle; (2) China must reassure Russia it has the leading role in Central Asia because of security and cultural ties; (3) despite prolonged debates over oil and gas matters, China must explain that this reflects diverse interests, not troubled relations; and (4) China seeks recognition of the equivalence of the two sides’ territorial disputes with Japan, as Putin’s soft line on the Kurils and silence on the Diaoyu dispute defy China’s hopes. Russia’s regional strategy treats Japan as a pole in a multipolar region rather than as a US ally against which multipolarity is directed, thus rejecting the bipolarity Beijing really is seeking.⁷

At the end of 2013, Zhao again noted that China has no wish to obstruct Russia’s regional aims in Central Asia, but Russia “continues to view China’s involvement with some apprehension.” He added that the two sides have “plans for economic integration with Central Asia, but their strategies sharply diverge, giving rise to potential conflicts,” while Russia objects to SCO consideration of closer regional integration. In these circumstances, Xi Jinping in September 2013 proposed the “Silk Road Economic Belt” (SREB), as China’s new strategy, building infrastructure and removing trade barriers, while hoping to avoid conflict with Russia and keeping cooperation the dominant framework.⁸ The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) is key to Putin’s goal of restoring Russian greatness and influence in the “near abroad.” China has to find a way to accommodate it. Chinese recognized that Putin’s strategy remains to engage many states, including Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan in a balanced strategy, at odds with Chinese goals. Demonizing Japan, Beijing’s agenda for Northeast Asia is seen as clashing with Putin’s plans.

The foreign policy work conference on October 24-25, 2013, the first of this kind with all standing committee members of the Politburo in attendance, clarified policy towards neighboring countries.⁹ With overtones of Sinocentrism and exclusion from this strategic and civilizational sphere of the United States, Russia was invited to align with this “community of common destiny.” Washington and Tokyo saw this community, a “new type of great power relations,” and the “China Dream” as overlapping steps for carving out a separate sphere hostile to the liberal, international order. Russia had to give up its dalliance with Japan and accept Chinese conceptualization. The immediate test was collaboration in Central Asia, where frictions over economics or security had to be reduced.¹⁰ Primary focus on Russia, along with South Korea, became Xi Jinping’s priority in Northeast Asia.

China strongly welcomed Russia’s “Turn to the East,” counteracting the Obama “pivot.” Despite tensions over regional policy, security ties were advancing well in 2013. Xi, however, appeared impatient to steer Putin toward a shared regional agenda. Putin at first appeared hesitant, fearing asymmetry.¹¹ In 2014 Putin’s gambit in Ukraine gave Xi precisely the opening he had been seeking.

China’s “March Westward” had faced Russian wariness. The SREB was initially a gamble as were efforts to strengthen the SCO, in light of Russia’s EEU goal of retaining control over Central Asia. Only with Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and the resultant sanctions from the US and its allies coupled with alarm in Central Asia over Putin’s move could China feel confident about the path forward. Moscow was unable to propose an effective alternative or wield Beijing’s economic muscle. The ongoing crisis in Ukraine, Western sanctions, and mounting economic problems at home led the Russian leadership to draw close to Xi’s idea of a strategic, regional partnership.¹²

How China responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 tested thinking about international relations. On the big picture, one author characterized Ukraine’s strategic location between two civilizations as the cause of the 2014 crisis. Russia would be left after the loss of Ukraine as only a regional power. To allow one’s civilizational sphere, often equated with one’s strategic space, to atrophy, is tantamount to failing as a great power. The driving force in the crisis over Ukraine is US foreign policy, After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US strove to prevent its revival—ensuring that the CIS would not work, expanding NATO to contain Russia, and encouraging “the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine, to widen the civilizational divide. Ukraine is the key to whether Russia revives as an “empire” or is kept in check. In sharp contrast to the US, China endorses the EEU and, seemingly, inclusion of Ukraine in it. By extension, Northeast Asia is China’s civilizational sphere. In line with reasoning dating back to the late 1980s, Beijing preferred Moscow to be anti-West, keen on its civilizational prerogatives, and distracted from Central Asia, as was happening in 2014.

China applauded Putin’s success in building economic, political, and military power to resist the West, and his use of that power for core interests, as in Ukraine. Equating China’s situation with Russia’s, facing an unmitigated threat from the West of containment and infringement into one’s civilizational sphere, such analyses refuted so-called US red lines based on arguments of inviolable sovereignty, railing against Obama’s “rebalance to Asia” as against China’s core interests, just as the US in Ukraine was interfering with Russia’s core interests, regardless of existing borders.¹³

Chinese mainly argue that Russia acted defensively in response to security encirclement, that the crisis exposed the limits of US hegemonism, and that it offered lessons to China on how to break out of its encirclement as it too faced US hegemonism. Implying that 1989-91 were a disaster for Russia (and China) for altering the balance of power and civilizations, one author calls Russia’s acts in 2014 the most important event since then in righting the balance, battling for its core national interests, as China is doing.¹⁴ Indeed, Putin emerged for many as a model to be followed in China.  

Chinese writers used Russia’s aggression to depict a globe split into spheres of influence, where security mixes with economics and culture, all three operating in tandem. Ukraine’s desire for European integration in its development is treated as a huge loss for Russia, and by implication, China.¹⁵ Moscow acted to demarcate its “natural” sphere. Geo-economics is the foundation of geopolitics. If Ukraine goes to the West, the US is the winner. If to the East, Putin’s Eurasian agenda is boosted (as is China’s). While Russia’s cause was not in doubt, some questioned the military means it employed, blaming the spiritual vacuum there and Russia’s limited economic appeal. Looking down on failure, this argument could serve China’s advance into Central Asia.¹⁶

Despite talk of China’s neutrality regarding Putin’s 2014 Ukraine aggression, narratives left no doubt that the cause was a “color revolution” or “unconstitutional coup” backed by the West threatening Russia’s sphere of influence. Western sanctions were seemingly welcomed for their positive role in reorienting Russian elites from Europhile thinking and boosting Sino-Russian relations and Russian economic integration with China, while transforming the consciousness of Russian officials and businessmen. The May 2015 decision to join the EEU and SREB produced many Chinese concessions in awareness that Putin had already made the biggest ones. This declaration said the two would work jointly in bilateral and multilateral frameworks, above all the SCO, which would greatly strengthen its economic role—something China long had sought.

The May 9, 2015, victory parade revealed the shared legacy of WWII, linking the historical fight against fascism to pursuit of a more just order.¹⁷ This put Russia on a trajectory to oppose Japanese security policy (following China) and South Korean thinking on the Korean War. While Chinese outliers dissented from the mainstream consensus, such as finding hope in Xi-Obama talks or in Xi-Park talks against North Korean behavior,¹⁸ they represented a last gasp in more marginal outlets.

After initial wariness about Russia-Japan talks, Chinese saw ties of Japan to the US and of Russia to China as dooming any progress. After all, China and Russia are victors in WWII, defending the order that followed, whereas Japan aims to overturn the current order, beginning with territorial disputes with China and Russia and historical revisionism. Clearly, the fundamental reality recognized by China is bipolarity with Japan acting on behalf of the US in containing China as well as pursuing expansionist and militarist aims of its own. Negativity on Japan had become prevalent.

The 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine caused Moscow to drop its guard against China’s activities in Central Asia and Beijing to show more tolerance, aware that it had the upper hand. Thus, it led to better bilateral relations. Yet, an emboldened China at times pressed for more. The years 2014-16 tested their promise to work closely together, first in Putin’s 2014 visit to Beijing and then in Xi’s 2015 visit to Moscow. Having agreed to link the SREB and EEU in regional economic integration, Chinese pointed to unrealized cooperative space. After all, Russia’s sanctioned economy required closer cooperation with China.¹⁹ Through regional economic cooperation neighboring countries would accept a return to a Chinese-led order with civilizational and geopolitical impact–a new type of international relations– to which, authors insisted, Russia would eventually decide to join.²⁰

At the end of 2015 Zhao Huirong warned Russia that if it dragged its feet on the SREB, China could proceed without it, pointing to charges in Russia that competition had come to exceed cooperation. Putin told Xi of his support in 2014 and again in May 2015, but Zhao found officials and academics casting doubt, thinking “imperialistically” about integrating an exclusive Eurasian sphere. Wariness of China had impaired cooperation in the Russian Far East and Eastern Siberia, causing great losses to Chinese firms fulfilling joint plans, and this could recur as a result of the psychological distress Russians feel at the changing balance of power, Zhao warned,²¹ revealing further troubled relations.

China sought Russia’s help in establishing a regional security network in the process of “power rebalancing” in the Asia-Pacific region, argued Zhao Gangcheng.²² As China advanced its Maritime Silk Road, Zu Lizhao suggested that Russia was not finding it easy to accept the presumed loss of influence and the strains resulting from suspicions in states such as India and Vietnam as well as the further marginalization of Russia’s northern transit routes. Yet, he was optimistic that shared opposition to the US military presence in the region would pull the two together.²³ The US aims to split the region, interfering with plans for regional integration. Russia has different plans, but China can accommodate them. A contrast was drawn between US interference in regional integration and Russian wariness, which could be overcome through China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). By 2016, Chinese had doubled down on Sino-Russian relations as key to progress in Northeast Asia. Yet, some were still warning of Russian mistrust of China. Liu Fenghua pointed to concern about Russia’s traditional sphere of influence in Eurasia in light of the calls for greater coordination of economic plans.²⁴ The cat and mouse game over rival plans for regionalism was on Chinese minds.

Next to driving wedges between the US and its allies, China preferred to cleave Northeast Asia into two, steering Russia away from Japan and South Korea as well as the US and keeping North Korea aloof from overtures other than its own. Its principal success in this time period was corralling the Russians, which had more to do with Putin’s thinking than Xi’s adroitness. Just months after Xi had challenged Putin with his Astana SREB announcement, Putin opted to attack in Europe rather than push back in Asia, accepting a new division of labor in Central Asia. Xi outbid Obama, Abe, and Park for Putin’s favor by understanding and sharing a worldview steeped in traditional communism. He assuaged Putin’s concerns with assurances that bipolarity in Northeast Asia actually paved the way to multipolarity in Asia, that Eurasianism will prevail despite signs of Sinocentrism, and that energy power plus military power could translate into equal relations with China despite a widening gap. The Crimean seizure and Russian advances into eastern Ukraine gave Putin a short-term victory and rush of confidence facilitating letting his guard down with China, but it was Xi who scored a long-term success as Russia turned to China, not the East, with little remaining leverage. 

Reviewing Chinese strategic thinking in 2016, Oriana Skylar Mastro argued that military advances are “the foundation of China’s strategy to establish its regional preeminence, keep Japan down, and push the United States out” of Northeast Asia—of higher priority than the South China Sea. She foresaw a significant heating up of the strategic competition there in the military, political, and economic realms.²⁵ In contrast to 2013, the security divide had greatly hardened in just a few years.

Chinese Strategic Thinking toward Japan, 2013-2016

A case can be made that Chinese views of Japan’s foreign policy in Asia open the best window on the prospects in the region for peace and stability, on the one hand, or tension and even the threat of armed conflict on the other. If Japan does not change course on the Diaoyu/Senkaku issue, keeps strengthening its military forces versus China, continues tightening its alliance with the United States, and does not reflect differently on its history of expansion, then “separating politics and economics” will turn into “politics cold, economics cold,” Chinese warned. Whereas a harsh tone toward Japan predated Xi Jinping, writings turned more explosive in the spring of 2013 after the head of a propaganda department who had served with Xi, took control of the key news outlets.²⁶

Judging regions for how much cooperation exists, one author called Northeast Asia one of the most backward regions, explaining that fragmentation in interests, traditional culture, historical memory, and ideology are to blame. If economic institutionalization is a positive force, it too fails to reach its potential since plans for a CJK FTA had been overtaken by the US-led, divisive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Remnants of the Korean War are blamed rather than the failure to join against North Korea from 2009. The onus is placed on Japan for territorial and history disputes rather than on China, Russia, or North Korea for their approaches toward cooperation. Cooperation against North Korean nuclear weapons had been temporary, unable to overcome conflicting behavior now responsible for regional fragmentation. North Korea is a factor blocking regional integration mainly because it contributes to US alliances that apply strategic pressure and use Japan and South Korea to contain China. Clearly, China sought to disrupt alliances and achieve coordination on its terms, not find common ground with US allies.²⁷ This viewpoint posits integration of the region as a common interest. Threatening peace and stability in the region are Japan’s military build-up and refusal to further express remorse over its past aggression. Chinese keep referring to the old order China is struggling to maintain, as opposed to Japan, bent on overturning the postwar order., i.e., the villain standing in the way of regionalism is Japan and the status quo is seen to be ongoing momentum for regionalism. Ignored is the fact of China’s behavior, centered on Japan, tearing the region into two.

Looking back in 2014, one author explained the ongoing nadir in relations with Japan, praising the 1972 system as the foundation for managing such issues as Taiwan, history, security, and territory through shared consciousness and overlap on overall interests. It had recognized that Taiwan is an internal matter for China and historical memory is not an internal matter for Japan. The result was a “golden age” or “honeymoon era” in relations, despite occasional frictions over historical issues. Japan provided economic assistance amid economic cooperation. Yet, the 1972 system did not suffice. Relations needed to change with new circumstances after the Cold War. Questions over Japanese historical consciousness still needed to be resolved. Japan had not directly recognized that Taiwan is part of China, fearing that to do so would legitimize China’s use of force to resolve the issue and would undermine the legal basis for assistance to the United States in the defense of Taiwan, which would cause the existing US-led regional security system to collapse. Insisting that Japan go beyond the 1972 agreement, Chinese ironically blamed it for undermining the status quo.

The 2006 system—a term attributed to Kokubun Ryosei—had refocused on national interests and realist strategy. Yet Japan could not accept the rise of China’s power, and the two could not forge a new foundation reflecting power realities. The 1972 system had gradually eroded, and a stronger China’s room for compromise narrowed. Abe went further in putting national interests first. In the 2006 system sovereignty, regionalism, geopolitics, and history all portended intensifying clashes. The Yalta system contained Japan, which in trying to change is threatening the natural order. South Korea, in seeking to alter the division of the Korean Peninsula or cooperate with Japan, was another threat to that order. In contrast, China’s quest for regional integration supported the natural order.

One source explained the reasons for and results of the quest in Japan to reform the Constitution and to remove the restriction on collective self-defense, making Japan a country that can go to war. It followed a fifty-year struggle in the Cold War era between conservatives and progressives over whether Japan would follow a peaceful path. With the United States focused only on maintaining its hegemonic position in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan had no choice but to follow. Abe’s aim is to restore traditional Japanese culture and make Japan a military great power, following the postwar focus on becoming an economic great power and later on becoming a political great power.²⁸ It is these provocative ambitions that Chinese describe as disrupting a well-established regional order.

In the first half of the 1990s, Japan was striving to break free of US domination to become a political great power. In the 2000s, as US concerns grew over overextension, calls for burden sharing were more satisfying for Japan. As a result, there was no longer a need to draw a line with values espoused by the United States or declare an independent policy toward Asia. Trumpeting a “China threat”—even provoking a territorial dispute—were seen as means to steer the US alliance in the desired direction and transform pacifist leanings still lingering in Japan, argued Chinese analysts. The crux of such charges against Japan—whether about China, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, or Russia—was that it was not a status quo power. Given rightist thinking about territory, history, military power, and neighboring counties, Japan threatened the region, reminiscent of its war record. It is striving to break out of the postwar system, while China defends the regional order. Turning facts on their head in this way obscured China’s own agenda for Northeast Asia. Past hopes for Japan accepting the natural course of East Asian regionalism, i.e., “reentry to Asia” means turning away from the West, reinforced by Japan’s growing sense of East Asian consciousness from the 1980s and talk of Asian values, were dashed by the 2010s. Instead, China chose to marginalize Japan and pressure it through isolation in Northeast Asia since it was foiling the effort to join in regionalism, as interpreted in China. Yet, fully excluding Japan never replaced lingering plans for its inclusion.²⁹

Authors insisted that a pacifist, apologetic Japan is critical to regional stability. To change that, in Chinese simplistic terms, is to revert to wartime militarism. In 2013-14, when hopes were raised of a G2, it proved convenient to center blame on Japan, while also targeting Xi’s opponents as soft on Japan. Charging that Abe is remilitarizing Japan and breaking the status quo of the regional order justified China’s assertive behavior as a defensive response to Japan’s changing course. Japanese consciousness is the villain, from great power aspirations in the 1980s to military power ambitions from the 2000s, necessitating charges of a “China threat.”³⁰ Chinese sources dismissed Japanese claims to be basing diplomacy on values: democracy, freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. They rejected the notion of a “principled foreign policy.” Containing China was paramount due to a crisis of consciousness to be resolved only by a correct understanding of Japan’s historical record.³¹

Views of Sino-Japanese relations are often less about the dynamics in bilateral relations than about the regional framework from which to evaluate these relations. One author in late 2013 chose a quadrangular great power format, relegating the Korean Peninsula and ASEAN to lesser priority. Noting that each decade since the 1930s has seen a major change in this great power balance, he depicts a constantly changing scene that naturally can expect further change. Instead of a Japan clinging to the status quo, he sees it as an assertive power. Even before Abe, a pattern is detected of Japan, without indication of any provocation, moving away from friendship toward China. The article describes Abe as hardening Japan’s posture on the islands, making a rightist shift in the “Japan model,” changing its military posture, and striving to enlist its neighbors in containing China. Given Xi’s successful meetings with the leaders of the United States and Russia in 2013 and China’s positive relations with many neighbors, Abe is facing strategic isolation, and Japan will have to change course. Using Abe’s negative image to make a broader point about a threat to China, this quadrangular approach isolates Japan, draws Russia close, and aims to keep the US engaged.³²

Negative fallout followed Abe’s late 2013 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine and his subsequent Davos comments comparing China’s current posture to that of Germany pre-WWI. Some speculated that Xi’s aim in the anti-Japan campaign was to weaken the Hu Jintao faction, including Li Keqiang, the premier, who allegedly had taken a softer line. Japanese recalled a group led by Zhou Yonggang and Jiang Zemin outflanking Hu Jintao, using the Japan issue to make him look weak and rallying nationalist support.³³ Blurring the line between a realist response to a new security environment and revisionism vindicating past aggression as well as between postwar reconciliation encouraging regional peace and prosperity and the expansionism prior to 1945 reached new heights in 2013-14.³⁴

Chinese had awakened to a shifting US-Japan alliance, blaming both US urgency to sustain its hegemony and Japan’s quest to escape from the postwar system, as both counter China’s rise. In the hope that China’s economic power could showcase “win-win” outcomes to overcome this “zero-sum” approach, Chinese targeted Japan anew. Its historical image and tense ties with South Korea held promise for China, while its new (provocative) posture posed a big obstacle if it were not deflected.³⁵

Washington encourages Japanese militarism and the revival of its maritime expansionism. Japan’s historical behavior is reviving, as it strives to become a military great power. Given this situation, China is depicted as entirely on the defensive with no room for compromise. If cooperation with Washington is still possible, this could not happen with Tokyo.³⁶ While China is competing with the United States in maritime power in the Asia Pacific, the conflict with Japan for now remains the most irreconcilable. Yet, Japan will eventually accept China’s relative superiority, it was argued.³⁷  

Wang Haibing argued that in the past few years with the deterioration in Sino-Japanese relations, Japan has actively tried to pull Taiwan into its orbit.³⁸ The rhetoric of “protecting Taiwan” and the “Japan-US-Taiwan alliance” featured prominently in bilateral talks. Wang further asserted that Japan’s more proactive engagement with Taiwan has a number of negative implications for regional stability. First, it escalates the Sino-Japanese conflict. Second, Japan’s efforts have yielded a so-called “pro-Japan complex” in Taiwan. Third, they fostered “Taiwan independence” rhetoric and movements, as they create a perception amongst pro-independence activists of having Japan and the United States on their side. Finally, Japan’s growing economic ties with Taiwan impeded economic relations between Taiwan and the mainland. The Taiwan issue clouded bilateral ties.

Zhu Fenggang said the territorial dispute with Japan is not between two neighbors with different interpretations of legal or historical records, but a pointed challenge by Japan against the postwar international order.³⁹ First, from Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea in the 1590s with the intention of conquering China and advancing further south, its nationalism has been rife with expansionism, as rekindled in the Meiji period. Tracing aggression against the Ryukyus (which in 1879 were renamed the Okinawa prefecture), Korea, and then Taiwan and the Diaoyu Islands in 1895, Zhu finds no interruption in this extreme nationalism before it had turned into fascism, which lasted until 1945.

Second, Zhu finds postwar Japan not in accord with the international order that had been established by the Cairo, Yalta, and Potsdam agreements, which required it to return territory taken from China and others and left it with just four main islands and various smaller ones. Entering the US-led Western camp and holding high the banner of anti-communism, Japan gained US protection that allowed it to continue illegally to occupy islands and to revive nationalism, using disputes over islands as the driving force. Thus, Japan never actually changed its thinking in the postwar era.

Third, as Japan’s economy stagnated in the 1990s and the Japanese people were distressed, Zhu finds that island consciousness served to divert their attention. What Japan seeks, in Russian eyes, is to negate the Yalta accords, the postwar order, history, and the international order. Fourth, Zhu finds Japan, after invoking the Cold War divide to rekindle its expansionism and arousing nationalism via territorial pretensions, giving priority to its struggle with China over territory as a means to further arouse the people and to attempt to contain China through a “maritime democratic league” focused on the United States, Australia, and India, above all. Given its ambitions, including to become a military great power, Japan is unlikely to compromise. Zhu’s essay broadens the context to the long-term course of expansionist history, casting doubt on its hold over Okinawa; the psychology of a nation, in which a “divine state” displaced the usual intermediate forces between people and state; and the international order, which anti-communism and containment have threatened and revived forces from the time of fascism. Chinese saw Japan as implacably driven by a fanatic ideology.

One author argued that since 2012 Abe has forcefully engaged in “recasting the postwar system,” as evidenced by moves to strengthen the military and lift the ban on collective self-defense.⁴⁰ His goal is to change Japan’s postwar strategic position, seeking to acquire an “normal country” status, and establish Japan as a regional leader with very dangerous repercussions for Asia’s security. The “China threat” discourse has become prominent, as manifest in both Japanese official statements and the mass media. As for the United States, it is facilitating a more militaristic Japan, as its pivot towards Asia calls for a stronger ally in Japan, while its declining influence in the region and weaker capacity to protect Japan induces Japan to pursue stronger measures of self-defense. Both Abe’s nationalistic agenda and more nationalist public opinion are at play in Japan’s security policy.

 Hope lingered, however, that strong economic ties could mitigate political frictions. Bilateral trade was poised to reach $300 billion, and Japan could not ignore China’s market if it wanted to remain globally competitive. The failure of “Abenomics” to revive Japan’s economy could also translate into weakening popularity of the nationalist forces, which could have positive implications on Sino-Japan relations, if only mutual economic needs prevented serious bilateral conflicts from arising. 

Agreeing in November 2014 to put an end to the standoff with Japan, Xi recognized that his ties with Obama and Park were less promising than foreseen and that Japan was rapidly upgrading its security posture as tensions in the East China Sea mounted. In November 2013, China declared a new air defense identification zone, a half year later Obama clarified that the US was obliged to defend Japan in case of coercion against the Senkakus, and Abe was meeting with success in his overtures to Washington even before his highly touted state visit to DC in April 2015.⁴¹ As Sino-US ties grew tenser, China responded to Abe’s desire for renewed summitry with a change of tone.

Critical to the response in Japan was unease over China’s rise. This change in attitude in Japan is showcased as the principal problem in bilateral relations, recognizing a fundamental change had occurred. By 2015 three pillars of the Northeast Asian order—the 1965 Japan-ROK agreement, the 1972 and 1978 Sino-Japan agreements, and the 1972 Sino-US agreement—all were proving shaky. Yet Chinese found some hope for building on the 2006 system of “win-win interests” in place of “friendship,” proposing to deepen relations after the start achieved in late 2014, arguing that Japan’s foreign policy is finally becoming more autonomous of the United States, and that Sino-Japanese relations are now improving and can continue to do so. This was in line with the new atmosphere after the Xi-Abe summit of November 2014, which was considered to have broken the ice.⁴²

Takahara Akio described Japan’s relations with China for two years from September 2012 as the worse they had been since 1972, while analyzing the impression that in late 2014 and early 2015 they had turned a corner after Xi Jinping started seeking détente leading to a sideline session at a November APEC summit in Beijing. After a second meeting in Indonesia in April 2015, Xi spoke before 3000 Japanese visiting Beijing, acknowledging that “The Japanese people were also victims of the war.” Xi sought some level of rapprochement, it seems to calm military tensions and near miss air collisions, to respond to a recent economic slowdown as Japanese investment had fallen sharply (political cooling leading to economic cooling), and to forestall a growing united front against China (pushed by Japan with US support). Yet, in tensions over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands and Japan’s new security legislation and alliance ties, China kept up its charges against “militarism.” If reformists still had influence, hardliners continued to hold the upper hand.⁴³

Chinese claimed success in diplomacy to resume the CJK summit, arguing not only will it spur economic growth it will accelerate regional integration, while still blaming Japan for spoiling political ties and seriously impacting economic ones too. Japanese FDI in China fell 39 percent in 2014, and Chinese were showing concern.⁴⁴ The focus had shifted to blaming the US, not Japan.

Shi Yongming assessed the recent East Asia Summit (EAS), warning that the United States was trying to sabotage political cooperation among China, South Korea, and Japan. Shi reminds readers that the vast majority of East Asian countries have experienced imperialism and colonialism—these are the relevant historical memories, not the tribute system or China’s export of revolution nor the trust built through the postwar US security system.⁴⁵ The explanation offered for why divisions occurred in the Cold War period is similarly one-sided and misleading. The villains in recent history are the United States and Japan for the way they responded to the Asian financial crisis—the US refusal to give assistance and interference in internal affairs and Japan’s competitive currency policies with some Southeast Asian states. Thus, regional cooperation is attributed to resistance to these policies, leading to pursuit of an East Asian community, the dream of which is heartily endorsed. Yet, it comes with warnings about US insistence to be included, moves to use its market as a weapon to control Asia, and efforts to change the orientation of their economies. Shi takes heart that while America promotes “universal values,” the region has been discussing “Asian values,” including inclusiveness that allows a US presence. Obama abuses this, readers are told, by insisting on US leadership. In 2015, Obama and Abe joined in pressing for use of their military alliance to lead cooperation in what the author calls “imperialist style logic.” They use TPP against East Asian economic cooperation and the South China Sea issue as a way to fragment regional political ties.

Chinese discussed “One Belt, One Road” (the initial name of the BRI) as combining a geopolitical and geo-economic strategy. It was a threat to the US hegemoni position in the Asia-Pacific and to Japan’s great power psychology as the only civilized state in East Asia, confirming that China had shifted from “taoguang yanghui” to a strategy to establish a new international order. The code words for this were “anti-hegemonism” and anti-power politics. With Japan as a focal point, this is an unabashedly negative view of the post-Cold War order faced by China, justifying a different world order: a “new type of major power relations” with the great powers, an FTA of the Asia-Pacific, provision of public goods through new banks and funds, and a new international economic order. OBOR was moving beyond passive policies under the pretext of others pressuring China.⁴⁶ 

In the fall of 2015, Chinese decided to switch to optimism about Japan and trilateral cooperation including South Korea, even saying it has been “completely restored” with a new, more cooperative phase in this triangle ahead. Shuttle diplomacy with Japan through 2015 quieted tensions and kept the 70th anniversary historical speeches from adding as much stress as feared.⁴⁷ Although the year 2015 turned out better than feared, given China’s restrained response to Abe’s historical statement and the CJK summit in Seoul in November, the shadow of history could not be dispelled. Chinese recalled the “anti-Japanese war” in the September anniversary celebration and linked it to the long-term imperialist designs of the US and the prospect of imminent “fascist revival” in Japan.⁴⁸

To forge an integrated region, Chinese calculate that they first must break apart US-led regionalism, as unnatural (an outsider), hegemonic, and focused on containing China. Yet, patience is required on the basis of strategic thinking only recently clarified. One author traced how Chinese views had evolved but were influenced by the “tribute system” and thinking about the traditional Eastern order and not yet focused on an exclusive, comprehensive regional economic framework. Long focused on the great powers and Western states, China had failed to develop stable cooperative relations with its neighbors or embrace regionalism until the late 1990s. Establishing a CJK FTA is one example cited of constructing a regional system, in which economics lead to politics and then to cultural and regional identity. Not only South Korea but Japan loomed as a target in Northeast Asia.⁴⁹ Chinese authors made clear that China had the confidence to lead economic regionalism.⁵⁰

Chinese Strategic Thinking toward the Korean Peninsula, 2013-2016

In a 2011 book aimed at improving China’s soft power with South Korea, Zhang Yunling stressed the need to look squarely at how others view China and to strive hard, despite the difficulty, to forge a friendly, respected image. Yet, the rest of the book concentrates not on what China can do but on the lack of receptivity in South Korea: textbooks convey Cold War logic, taking the Western viewpoint and treating China as the communist “other”; an ideological approach lacks objectivity on Tibet and Taiwan and excessively covers the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. In analyzing survey results, the authors conclude that South Koreans feel superior to China, but they are also envious and do not want China’s development to succeed. Respondents blame Chinese for looking down on “little” South Korea. Having been convinced of South Korea’s superiority, they are unwilling to accept China’s rise and, except for business forces, are not optimistic about its impact. Having a victim consciousness, they transfer blame for their own faults to the “other.” They charge: China does not support reunification, distorts history, especially the ancient Koguryo state; and has a socialist system. South Koreans also claim to have improved on Confucianism or to have invented cultural festivals that are Chinese. Zhang calls for soft power to change such attitudes.⁵¹

South Korea has been an important laboratory of China’s soft power experiment, a promising arena for Confucius Institutes to export China’s culture. It is probably the only country in which Confucian culture still has a major place in daily life. Yet, in a 2014 survey only 7 percent answered a long history and culture as what best represents China. The easiest way to improve the soft power of China should be utilizing its historical and cultural heritage, some might have thought.

The Chinese government may have thought that Korean Confucian heritage demonstrates that people share a similar value system. Ancient Korean elites admired Chinese culture and literacy, and wanted to emulate this big brother, but South Koreans are having a hard time identifying images of the past with the China of today. After all, China eradicated its roots for ideological reasons. Furthermore, for the younger generation, in particular, Confucianism is a stubborn, conservative, and coercive philosophy, at odds with liberal democracy, individual rights, and freedom. Promotion of Confucianism by China, run by a communist party, has not worked, is the implicit message of this Chinese study, unusual for the depth of coverage of Korean wariness.

An article called the “Korean Wave” the centerpiece in the Korean government’s public diplomacy and cultural strategy toward China. It attributes the Korean Wave’s success to cultural similarity between the two countries. Recognizing soft power as a new arena of international competition and culture as its core resource, the authors acknowledge the growing diversity of Korean cultural exports including music, food, clothing, and language, and ask how the Korean government has been succeeding in China.  The targets were ordinary people—often young people—, and the detailed examples over many years reveal active public diplomacy. Pointing to the increasingly positive feelings of Chinese toward Korea and trust between the two countries, the article found it more popular than any other country in China, far exceeding levels for North Korea, Japan, and Russia. Explaining why this happened, it asserts that a precondition was stable Sino-ROK political relations—an important force influencing public diplomacy. There is no conflict in core interests, as the two sides have similar positions on many international and regional issues. Another favorable factor Confucianism is the core of Korean culture, which blends East and West, traditional and modern, and the article contends that cultural psychology, values, and logic are very similar, opening the way for a mass following of Chinese who embrace the Korean Wave. The fact that the cultural exchange is perceived as equal increases receptivity, as opposed to cultural imperialism that arouses a sense of a cultural invasion. Here, one senses that China has a cultural strategy to convince people in both countries that they are united by culture, breaking from unacknowledged cultural clashes in the late 2000s and serving Xi Jinping’s “charm diplomacy.” However popular the Korean Wave is in other countries, there is a far more significant effect in China. The majority of students from abroad in South Korea are from China. The people of the two countries are drawing closer. The implication is that if the Chinese government felt that political relations became less favorable, conditions for the Korean Wave would change. In the background is the image of China showcasing cultural ties as a means to separate Korean from the West, as it has been doing with historical themes to separate it from Japan and to establish it is inherently within China’s sphere.⁵²

In 2014, 36 percent of South Koreans viewed Chinese leadership in Asia positively, while 55 percent did not. The youth were most resistant to Chinese leadership in Asia. 80 percent of those negative about Chinese cultural expansion oppose Chinese leadership in Asia as well. In contrast, 57 percent who thought positively of Chinese cultural diffusion saw its leadership in Asia positively. Although they recognize China’s rise to superpower status, they do not appear to be ready to accept the country as a leader in the region. It is not attractive enough to emulate or imitate. Favorability scores for China and Xi Jinping were second only behind the United States and Obama. When South Koreans were asked which country should be more important for South Korea in the future, 30 percent picked China over the United States. For most, however a practical economic partner was a trustworthy political partner. China’s relationship with North Korea plays an important role. South Koreans felt that the two countries do not share common values. In fact, Chinese soft power has not kept up with its hard power. China is still a communist country, North Korea’s friend, a state with many problems in human rights, and unbearably arrogant.⁵³  Such findings from polling in South Korea showed mixed results but reason for Chinese hopes.

Chinese coverage was positive for Park Geun-hye’s June 2013 visit, seen as a snub to Japan, which usually is the second destination of a South Korean president. She was greeted as an “old friend” of the Chinese people, who emphasized emotional linkages in a “trip of heart and trust” by someone who speaks Chinese and sings songs in the language. While Park focused on China’s critical role in managing North Korea, Xi strove to restart the Six-Party Talks as the centerpiece in regional security diplomacy. Whereas China welcomed the “trust-building process” she was adopting toward North Korea, authors noted that China is much less important than the United States to her country and that the DPRK is of great importance as a strategic buffer to China. Indeed, one source focused on the strengthening US-ROK alliance and its negative impact on China’s security, but suggested China could break the chain aimed at its containment at its most vulnerable point by cooperating more closely with the ROK.⁵⁴ Thus, Xi sought to drive a wedge between the ROK and the US as well as Japan, while Park unmistakably aimed to drive a wedge between China and North Korea.

The post-summit period in 2013-14 was seen as a “honeymoon” in the Sino-Korean relationship. Economic interdependence was noted as a positive factor, but more efforts to deepen mutual trust were sought. Chinese argued that mutual tension with Japan brings Korea and China closer, adding that Seoul should invest in closer relations with Beijing to put more pressure on Japan. Even if it could not play a rebalancing role in the region, some argued it could mitigate the power relations between China and the United States. Park’s policy of aligning with the US and harmonizing with China was seen as an indicator of her promotion of middle power diplomacy, but Chinese said a “middle power” had to prove itself by being more assertive in challenging US policies.

Park’s policies were seen as mainly focused on the trust-building process on the Korean Peninsula and the diplomacy of confidence. If her early visits to the United States and China consolidated relations with the two major powers, four challenges remained: improving DPRK-ROK bilateral relations and opening the process of trust building on the Korean Peninsula; establishing China-US-ROK cooperation mechanisms and maintaining a balance between China and the United States in Asia; reaching historical reconciliation among the ROK, China and Japan; and finally, achieving peace in Northeast Asia in light of the existing security dilemmas. South Korea offers a promising test because it is the US ally most susceptible to Chinese pressure—due to Sino-North Korean relations, high economic dependence on China, and historical expectations about a close, vassal state. Pressure aimed at drawing closer in views of history; seeking an agreement on a multilateral approach to North Korea different from the US one; staying silent on values that reinforce the US approach to the region; keeping away from joint military actions that strengthen the US alliance system; and not cooperating with Japan that could be construed as helping it to elude the isolation Beijing is seeking. The tone had changed from maintaining stability to pursuing China’s national interests, as interpreted by See-won Byon in her 2014 scrutiny of Chinese publications.⁵⁵

Yan Xuetong argued that Sino-ROK relations are ready to draw much closer. So far, China has been slow to forge relations of strategic military cooperation with its neighbors. A breakthrough with South Korea could neutralize one of the US alliances and tighten cooperation against Japan’s historical denial, containing Japan and blocking its attempts to take the path of militarism, while also serving to steer North Korea. Yan proposed a ten-year transition, in which political ties advance through frequent summits, shared positions on international issues, and a common attitude toward Japan. South Korea would stop helping the United States and be better off in facing North Korea. Convinced that the United States would resist this, Yan argued that some people in the South Korean government were amenable to it.⁵⁶ Yet, he ignored that such South Koreans seek not to accommodate bipolarity, but to forge a bridge for regional cooperation.

The Chinese urged the creation of a more inclusive East Asian regional order, especially with regard to China and Russia. One perspective was that of economic integration, especially that among China, Korea and Japan, as inevitably driving regional cooperation in the future. The CJK summit in Seoul on November 1, 2015, whetted China’s appetite for regional economic integration with a three-way free-trade agreement (FTA), but this was secondary to China’s security priorities. The US-ROK alliance makes it difficult for the economic interdependence of China and South Korea to lead to commensurate political and security ties, interfering with the natural course of regional integration. China’s security posture, values, and attitudes toward its neighbors are only perceived as positive for integration, but the thrust is how to lessen the US presence in the region.

Although Northeast Asian security is China’s priority, economic cooperation served as the most promising way to elicit security cooperation. Geopolitical stability requires creating a Northeast Asian security mechanism based on the Six-Party Talks, and coexistence between China-supported multilateral institutions and US-led bilateral alliances, and economic ties to South Korea held out hope, especially in 2013-14 under Park Geun-hye of advancing this goal. Yet, some recognized persistent “contradictions” in China-ROK relations, putting this approach in doubt. Despite common political, security, economic, and cultural interests, differences remained over North Korea and the United States. Assessments of relations drew attention to three priority issues: North Korea, the US-ROK alliance, and political trust. Sino-South Korean differences over North Korea, history, and maritime issues all could be traced to the presence of the US alliance, the key constraint to further deepening the 20-year China-ROK relationship, Chinese insisted.⁵⁷

One author reviewed Park’s interest in “trustpolitik,” in parallel applying pressure and seeking dialogue, while also offering humanitarian assistance in search of mutual trust with North Korea, saying nuclear weapons are but one factor affecting relations, the interests of many countries are affected, and that their cooperation is necessary to improve North-South relations, but most of all sincerity between the two sides is required. This excludes preconditions and prioritizes exchanges and cooperation. There is no sense that the North is a bigger obstacle. Indeed, Lee Myung-bak was the cause of tensions increasing, and North Korea was aroused to take countermeasures. South Korea is to blame for ignoring the North, thereby provoking it. If two incidents in 2010 brought the two sides to the brink of war, there is no specifying that the North was at fault, Park is credited with softening this approach in what are “internal” policies, not international relations.

A review of Park’s March 2014 Dresden talk found that under Park it was very hard to notice appreciable development in North-South relations, blaming the impact of ROK-US military exercises and the US factor broadly: its policies for preventing improved relations, its troop presence, and the legacy of “Cold War” thought. Containing North Korea is seen as part of the US “rebalance” to Asia and as a cause of the worsening security situation in Northeast Asia. North Korea and the region are victims, and China should stand with the North not the South in a confrontation. Washington has to cut a deal with North Korea, rewarding it before it moves to denuclearize or addresses human rights issues. Until then, the North’s behavior is understandable. Beijing has no apparent role but to urge Seoul as well as Washington to change course. But soon after US pressure on Korea was rising. With security in the forefront, Washington leaned to Tokyo.

Frequent mention of insufficient trust hints at the scope of the US-ROK alliance. China’s opposition to recent US-ROK military exercises conflicts with Park’s DPRK policy of both pressure and dialogue. Ahead of the opening of the Ahn Jung-geun memorial in Harbin in January, the PRC Foreign Ministry specifically voiced its willingness to cooperate on common concerns on Japan-related historical issues. Such declarations of China’s joint stance with Seoul against Japanese behavior only seem to further Chinese efforts to divide US allies and weaken South Korea’s integration into the US-centered regional security order in the name of opposing hegemony.

The remnants of the Korean War are blamed rather than the failure to join against North Korea from 2009. The onus is placed on Japan for territorial and history disputes that fragment the region. Dismissing five-country cooperation against North Korean nuclear weapons and Sino-ROK cooperation on history as temporary, unable to overcome the conflicting relations responsible for regional fragmentation, Chinese define the basic problem in zero-sum terms that cannot be altered by these steps. The fault is not North Korea’s, but the way others are using it.

For a pathway to autonomy and peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula. three conditions were listed: (1) in security, not to regard each other as an enemy; (2) in the economy, relative equilibrium between the two; and (3) in policy, not to be bound by the will of external actors.⁵⁸ The period from the end of the Cold War until now is explained as a time when the legacy of the Cold War remained strong in Northeast Asia. North Korea faced a hostile environment, actively sought to improve relations with the United States, Japan, and South Korea, and was rebuffed, leaving it in a disadvantageous position for unification.⁵⁹ Failure of the United States and Japan to normalize relations with it is equated with causing the North to behave as it did in a Cold War environment. Not wanting to be in a disadvantageous situation in normalization, the North turned to nuclear weapons, a natural result, provoked by the other countries. South Korea finally chose a path toward reunification in 2000 that did not follow the will of the great powers, but with the South strong and the North weak, still followed a policy essentially of “unification through absorption.” 

Rejecting US troops and the US alliance as each side focuses on the nationality interest and South Korea stops demanding that its democratic system be the basis of unification, Seoul can show it does not regard Pyongyang as the enemy. The very existence of the alliance system in the region is treated as a sign of the Cold War, making its removal a precondition for unification, with the “rebalance to Asia” lumped with this notion as a cause of confrontation. By strengthening its US alliance and cooperating with Japan South Korea raises the chances of war. Park’s reemphasis on unification is missing the mark. She should concentrate on the coexistence of two systems without pressure on North Korea, end its isolation, help it to achieve economic balance with the South, accept it as is. The problem is the United States, which, in light of China’s rise, sees the Korean Peninsula as having geopolitical significance, pressing for a stronger alliance that only damages the chances of unification and North Korean cooperation. China has specified that it would not accept actions that destabilize the peninsula and are not in accord with China’s plans to establish a community in its neighborhood. Denuclearization seems to be an afterthought in such discussions.

Bi Yingda offered guidance on deepening the Sino-ROK strategic partnership as part of China’s “Neighbor Supporting Strategy” and in response to US strategic containment: from economic ties to a triangular approach shaping unification of the peninsula. Bi recognized the huge success of Xi Jinping’s visit to Seoul on July 3-4, 2014, while focusing on challenges that remained, especially due to US efforts in security related to China and North Korea and US blocking of East Asian economic integration, giving added salience to the peninsula. The US regional system is being extended; so, as Xi explained on November 8, 2013, China’s efforts to forge a community must focus on states at the crossroads. South Korea is one. While it is a US ally, it has very close economic ties with China and common interests in peninsular peace, making it a model for an effective Chinese policy, as seen in the Park-Xi summits. While Seoul cannot openly oppose the US “rebalance,” its policies can play a special role in ameliorating strategic tensions. With the Korean nuclear issue now at an impasse and little chance of positive US moves, cooperating more with it may help to restart the Six-Party Talks. Beijing and Seoul cannot let up their pressure on Abe on history, making Japan pay a price for far-right extremism—a key to cooperation. Xi’s July 2014 visit won high praise from the South Korean public, but in the political and security sphere relations have not developed in line with economic ties and, due to the interference of outside elements, could deteriorate, even interfering with economic ties. Bi praises the North-South agreements reached by progressive leaders of South Korea. Criticizing the North’s nuclear weapons as giving the US a pretext for developing its anti-missile system and for strengthening its military alliances, Bi refers to the common aim of Beijing and Seoul in getting both Washington and Pyongyang to return to the Joint Statement of September 19, 2005. Japan is becoming a joint security threat to China and South Korea, challenges Seoul is being asked to acknowledge, although it agrees with US conditions for restarting the Six-Party Talks. Given the US push for military trilateralism with Japan and Seoul’s loss of balance in ties to Beijing and Washington, it may take the road of anti-China policies. One recommendation is to combine Xi’s SREB and Park’s Eurasian Initiative. A final theme is to reduce public emotionalism toward each other. The overall thrust is to recognize zero-sum relations and to ask it to choose China, not the US and Japan, or face the consequences.⁶⁰

On the Sino-Japanese-South Korean triangle, Washington’s shift to focus on ISIS, despite pressing China in the South China Sea, was seen as helping Japan to try to improve relations with China and South Korea. Yet, the differences between Japan and its neighbors are not conflicts over power, but clashes over views of the postwar international order. Acceptance of the Potsdam and Cairo agreements is the basis of peace in Asia, and it seems as if Abe’s objective is to bring down this East Asian order, replacing it with the results of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. This is seen as dangerous for its impact on the status of Taiwan and other disputed islands. Lumping ROK and Japanese historical views together and linking them to the postwar order and today’s security gives the appearance that this triangle is fundamentally split into two versus one. It suggests that constitutional restraints have been the only thing keeping Japan from renewing military aggression against both China and South Korea with the US role uncertain. Thus, China and South Korea face a common challenge, not just in historical language but in a security threat to the regional order.⁶¹

One paper traced South Korea’s middle power diplomacy from Roh Moo-hyun to Park Geun-hye, pointing to examples from Korea as “balancer” to Korea as regional energizer via Park’s NAPCI (Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative). If options as a middle power are rather limited, still it should proceed with such initiatives. As for Roh’s 2005 notion of a balancer, this meant its ability to moderate the behavior of great powers in Northeast Asia and to assume the leading role in dealing with matters on the Korean Peninsula, based on geopolitical thinking that Korea is at the crossroads of the region and inevitably the juncture of great power struggle, arousing suspicion of the powers. Its response is to seek to escape this competition and be accepted as the central state in the region, to use contradictions among the four great powers for leverage. Given growing divisions and contradictions in the ROK-US alliance and the historical tensions and territorial troubles with Japan, rapid development of Sino-South Korean trade is having growing impact on South Korea’s prosperity, Seoul’s initiatives are regarded as understandable. Roh saw turning his country into a balancer as the way to halt great power conflict in the region, while turning Korea into its economic hub. To accomplish this, Seoul needed more independence from Washington, gaining autonomy in its own defense and leeway to advance ties with Pyongyang, which helped to make progress on the North Korean nuclear question. Roh did not go far enough, even if the idea of being a balancer was a stretch due to conflicts with Washington, which led to US loss of trust. Yet, the balancer idea has significance for removing remnants of the Cold War and forging a regional security framework even if no regional great power could accept Seoul taking the lead. NAPCI shows that Seoul is conscious that the world has entered an era of multipolarity, can no longer center diplomacy on the ROK-US alliance, and values middle power multilateralism. NAPCI is interpreted as Seoul seeking more autonomy and equality in relations with Beijing and Washington, a welcome development for Beijing. As for problems with NAPCI, Pyongyang is fiercely against it as serving US hegemonism and doubts prevail on how a middle power can exert much influence on great powers, especially on security issues; but it is positive for turning Seoul away from excessive orientation to its ally.⁶²

Chinese encouraged middle power diplomacy, balancing two great powers and capitalizing on the duality between the US-led bilateral security alliance system and Chinese-led multilateral economic cooperation. Park was taking advantage of shifts in the Sino-US relationship and nuanced understanding of Chinese strategic culture to build a close relationship with China within the parameters of ROK-US relations.⁶³ Like other middle powers, South Korea seeks to improve its international status and image through multilateral diplomacy, even as it asserts its independence from the United States and gain international support for its position on reunification. On the one hand, South Korea is implementing this approach at a favorable time, when the transformation of the international system has created more space for middle powers to influence world affairs. At a regional level, South Korea can balance among competing great powers. On the other, the alliance imposes major constraints, and global great power politics limit South Korea’s international role to “coordinator,” not “leader.” Also, the presidential election cycle disrupts the continuity of its diplomacy. Thus, Seoul is aiming too high, and Park cannot overcome the structural constraints that limit middle power diplomacy. Yet, China’s interest is to support middle power diplomacy in order to improve regional cooperation and decrease the influence of the US–South Korea alliance.⁶⁴

THAAD served as a dividing line for policy toward South Korea, demonstrating that courtship of Park had failed. Xi had not driven a wedge between the ROK and US, and Park had failed to win China’s cooperation on North Korea. THAAD symbolized Seoul’s reaffirmation of Washington as its primary security provider, marking a fundamental divergence in Beijing and Seoul’s perceptions on the North Korean nuclear threat.⁶⁵ Beijing repeatedly warned Seoul that THAAD crossed a red line. Huanqiu Shibao on August 10, 2016, stated, “China must pressure South Korea politically, economically, in trade, tourism, and culture, militarily, and diplomatically. We have many means at our disposal.”⁶⁶ Blinded by its own propaganda that Seoul had shifted to equidistance between it and Washington, China felt a need to react strongly to this “betrayal.”

In Huaiwainet of August 27, 2015, an article credits Park’s forthcoming visit to China for being a sign of an independent foreign policy. It added that South Korea felt pressure and held an internal discussion about the so-called balance between the United States and China. Essentially, China’s memorial event is to make sure that people do not forget history, not to arouse new revenge. The people of the Korean Peninsula through the colonial period stood side by side with the Chinese nation; so it is only natural that the representative of South Korea, should be present. With Abe rushing to reverse historical verdicts and seeking passage of new security laws, insisting in his statement that there would be no further apologies to China and South Korea, and not having the face to come to Beijing, he dared the leaders of the two countries to join together in a new anti-Japan united front. On history, Seoul’s response is about historical truth, on security it is about following US Cold War thinking, and on alliance relations it is about supporting US hegemonism, Park’s visit is to demonstrate that South Korea is truly an independent country. Sino-South Korean relations have room to develop further if the South shows more independence on regional affairs.

If some charged an impatient Washington with “strategic patience” over North Korea, this label applied better to Beijing’s approach, believing that time was on its side. It did not need to press Pyongyang much given a low priority for denuclearization nor yield to US appeals except if a tradeoff for some Chinese interest was anticipated. North Korea made the US a supplicant, put pressure on South Korea to seek Beijing’s favor, and helped to draw like-minded Russia closer. It occupied an important place in Xi Jinping’s strategy for transformation of Northeast Asia.

In 2013-14 relations with North Korea were strained, and some articles called for distancing China from it, but the mainstream rejected that as geopolitically self-defeating. Instead of applying more pressure, serving ROK and US interests, they prioritized stability and advocated renewed Six-Party Talks without preconditions, as if a sense of security would suffice for denuclearization. If Seoul collaborated in developing the North’s economy and all agreed to a security framework to supersede US alliances, China would be on the way to regional integration and the North would be satisfied.

After the execution of Jang Song-Thaek, Kim Jong-un’s uncle considered the leading pro-China North Korean official, Chinese media downplayed this event as insignificant for bilateral ties and affirmed that trade relations would not change as a result. Despite US appeals for China to press North Korea harder (deploring that China’s response since 2009 had not been sufficient) and Chinese recognition that the nuclear problem had entered a critical stage, the North’s use for China’s regional agenda had not changed. Saying the Cold War had not ended in Northeast Asia due to US ideology and its pressure on South Korea not to take meaningful measures to cooperate with the North, Chinese faulted Park for strengthening the alliance even as Xi encouraged her overtures to him. Also blamed was Japan, pretending to be a great power and using the “security threat” as a pretext for that along with warnings about China’s rise.⁶⁷

Abandoning North Korea could lead to it being tossed into the arms of a third country; it collapsing under political, economic, and military pressure; or it becoming isolated without assistance, possibly causing a conflagration on the peninsula. All of these results would allow the United States to achieve the strategic victory it failed to win in the Korean War. The Cold War is still under way in East Asia, China must proceed in accord with its zero-sum logic, and North Korea is an asset.

A veteran of the Six-Party Talks, Yang Xiyu noted that the North Korean issue has had increasing importance in Sino-US relations; however, thinking on a security framework for the peninsula is completely different on the meaning of a peaceful resolution or how North-South relations should evolve. How this issue is handled, Yang adds, will have great significance for the new type of major power relations taking shape. Continuation of the US-Japan-ROK triangle when the Sino-Soviet-DPRK side had disappeared meant that the Cold War persisted and provoked Pyongyang to pursue nuclear weapons. If the source of insecurity is the North’s weakness compared to the South or the US alliances, then only by changing the balance on the peninsula and the regional power balance the is cooperation on denuclearization likely to advance beyond today’s limited measures. There is no ambiguity here about who is to blame and how different China’s proposals are from those of the United States and its allies. The goals attributed to Pyongyang are actually Beijing’s strategic aims. Yang is reflecting opposition to a “color revolution” and why China must support the North. Coverage of the Bush period is centered on China’s disagreements with the US position, not on what was touted at the time as five versus one in favor of denuclearization. Nothing is said about why the Agreed Framework broke down, sparing Pyongyang of blame. Obama’s strategic patience was a step back from Bush’s approach due to loss of priority in dealing with North Korea. The North is just seeking what appears to be a fair deal through bilateral talks. Instead, Obama has sought to increase military pressure and sanctions, tightening the alliance with South Korea, conducting military exercises, and applying unilateral sanctions apart from the United Nations., Yang depicts the North as caught in the Cold War, as if that is a consequence of alliances and, similar to China, it is just another innocent victim. It follows that China and the United States must turn their attention from the theme of denuclearization through a broader bilateral agenda. Almost nothing is said about South Korea in this article. It apparently counts for little. North Korea is not faulted; it seemingly is an innocent victim. A new type of major power relations is all about a complete turnabout in US policy, accepting China’s strategy for the Northeast Asia region.⁶⁸

When Standing Committee member Liu Yunshan attended North Korea’s celebratory military parade on October 10, 2015, coverage shed new light on how China’s policy toward North Korea is unfolding. Former diplomat Yan Jing said this visit would alleviate the situation on the peninsula. Xi Jinping sent a telegram and a letter through Liu, congratulating the North Korean party on its seventieth anniversary. China pointed to long-standing close ties between the leaderships of the two countries, congratulated the North for its new achievements in improving the people’s livelihood under Kim Jong-un, and expressed willingness—through joint efforts—to improve relations. The Chinese side expressed support for stability on the peninsula, the goal of denuclearization, and dialogue as the path to resolving problems, but the North refrained from supporting denuclearization or the resumption of the Six-Party Talks. Kim talked of preparing for a decisive war to the death with the United States. If the North’s leading thought will not change in the short run, Liu Yunshan showed China’s intention to move relations forward.⁶⁹ The same source dismissed the infantile notion of China drawing close to Seoul and distancing itself from Pyongyang. Given changes in the overall international situation, it is clear that China wants to normalize ties but not to the level of a “blood alliance,” approaching the peninsula from the angle of security and reaffirming the three maintenances: of stability, denuclearization, and resolution through dialogue leading to the Six-Party Talks. North Korea had shown sufficient restraint to justify improved relations and for China to clarify that South Korean interpretations of its policy are not correct, but even as the ice has been broken, Chinese warned that pressure would intensify if nuclear tests were to take place.⁷⁰

Huanqiuwang directed its editorial wrath at those who bad-mouth North Korea, as if they were from South Korean, US, or Japanese societies. It rationalizes that the North faces more difficulties than China due to international sanctions and the continued Cold War in Northeast Asia. US-ROK military exercises have forced the North to concentrate on security in disregard for its many efforts to reduce tensions in order to turn away from military bluster and provocations. The editorial blames the outside world for viewing it as a “monster.” Instead of Internet criticisms, Chinese should be sympathetic, avoiding the danger of the outside world misreading the situation, treat the North as a friend, and respect it, not only from China’s government, but from the people.⁷¹

A proposed “dual-track” solution, in four stages, focused initially on the easier tasks: (1) North Korea would freeze its nuclear program, halt all proliferation, and reenter negotiations; (2) it would receive temporary security assurances and begin to open itself up; (3) it would receive a security guarantee and irreversibly abandon its nuclear program; and (4) a peaceful resolution would be reached on the peninsula. Throughout this process, the parties would adhere to three principles: non-nuclearization of the peninsula, avoidance of war, and stronger Sino–US coordination. Successful resolution of the nuclear issue is inseparable from the final resolution of the divided peninsula, and China will play a crucial role in mediating between the United States and North Korea.⁷² This backs the North’s call for the removal of US troops and gutting the US–ROK alliance, avoids putting the onus on North Korea, dismisses South Korea as a factor, and is an obvious G2 formula, leaving the peninsula as a sphere of China’s rising influence amenable to eventual Sinocentric reorganization.

Chinese argue that North Korea seeks nuclear weapons out of a sense of insecurity, blaming the United States and South Korea for aggressive responses that only increase North Korea’s sense of vulnerability. The nuclear crisis was deepening, the North’s capabilities advancing, and the United States was trying to force China to take a harder line on North Korea, which would harm North Korea–China relations, and, therefore, increase the direct threat to China posed by North Korea as well as risk proliferation in Northeast Asia. US plans to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea, a radar system seen as covering parts of China and Russia, were opposed. The way forward was for South Korea and the United States to halt their joint exercises and North Korea to halt its tests, as the Six-Party Talks resumed, leading to “sustainable security,” as laid out by Xi Jinping in 2014, focusing on the dual goals of non-nuclearization and achieving peace and security by respecting each party’s security needs, promoting regional economic and social development.⁷³ Thus, the nuclear issue served as a foil for China’s agenda for “peaceful multilateralism,” feigning this would meet Pyongyang’s needs, not be a Sinocentric playbook.

Rather than finding common ground with Seoul or pressuring Pyongyang, Beijing’s consistently insisted that the Six-Party Talks are the best forum for negotiating a resolution to the North Korean nuclear crisis with possible improvements to the negotiation framework halted since 2009, when North Korea pulled out (a development blamed on an overly rigid US position). The Six-Party Talks structure had collapsed because: (1) the five parties, excluding North Korea, disagreed on how to achieve denuclearization; and (2) North Korea, which wants the agenda to include peaceful unification, had too little control over the agenda (requiring “parallel advances” that integrate discussion of the nuclear issue with consideration of North Korean concerns about its own security, e.g., a formal peace treaty to replace the existing ceasefire on the Korean Peninsula so that the United States will withdraw its troops from South Korea and North–South tensions will ease). In this view, the North had not completely abandoned dialogue. While the path ahead was seen to be difficult, China’s bottom line was that Six-Party Talks were irreplaceable as the key institution.⁷⁴

Conclusion

Xi Jinping’s first four years in power saw deteriorating hopes for a G2 with the US, increasing plans for regional coordination with Russia, a slight shift away from marginalization of Japan, and Xi’s gambit with South Korea fail as he tilted further to North Korea despite meager ties. As interest in South Korea ebbed, that in Russia intensified. Plans for a security framework in this arena centered on Six-Party Talks and for economic integration on new hope for a CJK FTA and for “docking” Sino-Russia relations encompassing Central Asia. Intent on excluding the US and as wedge-driving appeared remote, China focused on an economic pathway as the backup plan and, increasingly, on arousing security tensions as the way to alter Northeast Asian dynamics.  

Over four years China swung Russia much closer to its side, opening Central Asia economically and putting more pressure on US allies. It grew more welcoming to North Korea, warily waiting for it to draw closer while using its belligerence to try to lure South Korea. Demonization of Japan softened some in hopes of greater economic integration. China’s strategy to forge an exclusive, integrated region in Northeast Asia had not changed, but the landscape appeared different by 2017.