A rchive Date
[ 26-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ China ]
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[http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1750388
Better China ties complicate U.S. policy toward Korea
By TOM RAUM
Associated Press
Jan. 25, 2003, 7:16PM
WASHINGTON - Passing almost unnoticed in efforts to defuse the nuclear standoff with North Korea are America's vastly improved relations with China.
Bush administration officials see that as both an opening and a complication as the president struggles to frame U.S. policy for the Korean Peninsula.
It also may explain the administration's seemingly mixed signals about North Korea, veering from "tailored containment," while apparently ruling out a military option, to refusing to negotiate with the North and then offering talks and a possible resumption of energy aid.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., called it "flip-flopping" and a "change in position from one day to the next." The administration rejected such criticism, but officials concede the issues are complex - and China's role crucial. A nuclear-free Korean Peninsula is in the interests of China, its Asian neighbors and the United States. How to achieve that is the rub.
China does not want the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to collapse, either from new economic penalties or from military action. That could flood China with refugees, one reason why Beijing has helped to keep the reclusive ruler propped up with food and oil and why Washington is moving cautiously.
Sensitivity to China's political status in the region also may account for U.S. reluctance to go before the U.N. Security Council. Such a move would put China, one of the council's five permanent members with veto power, in an awkward position.
While the United States emphasizes China's historic ties and influence with the bleak and starving communist North Korea, Beijing seems far more interested in advancing its blossoming trade relationship with democratic, industrialized South Korea.
"The North is irrelevant from the point of view of China's economic strategy. Its economy is a basket case. It's not an attractive market," said Nicholas Lardy, a China expert at the Brookings Institution. "North Korea does get food support and petroleum and other types of energy from China. But otherwise, their trade is almost nonexistent."
China's economy quietly passed Italy's last year to become the world's sixth largest. It is on track to shoot past Britain and France in the next several years and to rank behind only the United States in a few decades.
China is cooperating on the U.S.-led fight against terror. In the Security Council, China acquiesced on the hard-line U.S. position on Iraq. China and the United States have restored military exchanges. Also, China just celebrated its first anniversary of joining the World Trade Organization, membership the United States helped advance.
Bush, meanwhile, has dropped his characterization of China as a "strategic competitor" and seldom mentions the touchy topic of Taiwan's status. He has visited China twice. Chinese President Jiang Zemin came to Bush's Texas ranch in the fall. Vice President Dick Cheney is headed to China in March.
Preoccupied with its military buildup in the Persian Gulf, administration officials had hoped China would take a more aggressive role and exert influence over North Korea and let the United States remain on the sidelines, at least for now.
Part of the administration's initial low-key reaction to North Korea's resumed nuclear arms program - Secretary of State Colin Powell went on five Sunday television talk shows several weeks ago to deny it was a crisis - was intended to provide a clear opening for China to intervene, say those close to the process.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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