Posted on 05/05/2014 6:28:50 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
That China has contingency plans on the books concerning the possible implosion of their starving communist gulag state of a neighbor certainly isn’t much of a surprise. China is North Korea’s last major economic and financial supporter, supplying the country with food, weapons, and energy, and headache-inducing, saber-rattling, off-the-wall, costly annoyance that North Korea may be for the Chinese, they are still fellow communists, after all — and that means covering their collective behind in the event of collapse and especially preventing any undesirable foreign influence from entering the region. (Hint: They’re talking about us/South Korea.) Via the Telegraph:
China has drawn up detailed contingency plans for the collapse of the North Korean government, suggesting that Beijing has little faith in the longevity of Kim Jong-un’s regime.
Documents drawn up by planners from China’s People’s Liberation Army that were leaked to Japanese media include proposals for detaining key North Korean leaders and the creation of refugee camps on the Chinese side of the frontier in the event of an outbreak of civil unrest in the secretive state.
The report calls for stepping up monitoring of China’s 879-mile border with North Korea.
Any senior North Korean military or political leaders who could be the target of either rival factions or another “military power,” thought to be a reference to the United States, should be given protection, the documents state. …
The report suggests “foreign forces” could be involved in an incident that leads to the collapse of internal controls in North Korea, resulting to millions of refugees attempting to flee.
It’s also no secret that China’s patience with North Korea has been growing particularly thin of late, brought on by their bizarre delusions of nuclear grandeur. Just last month, China was again finding it necessary to remind the NorKs that they would do well to toe the line on that front:
China said Thursday it will not permit chaos on its doorstep, in another thinly veiled warning to its wayward ally North Korea amid indications that the North is technically ready to conduct a fresh nuclear test.
“Peace and stability is in the immediate interests of China. We will by no means allow war or chaos to occur on our doorstep,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters, when asked about the possibility of a fourth nuclear test by North Korea.
The comments by Qin echo those of Chinese leaders, but were the strongest yet by the Chinese foreign ministry in response to recent reports that North Korea appears to have completed technical preparations for a nuclear test.
I don’t wish to give China a pass here, because I find a lot to disagree with China’s leadership about. It is however interesting that with power and global standing, a certain level of realism is almost unavoidable.
Even China must come to terms with North Korea’s dementia.
Now, what will it do about it?
They will act only when the threat of North Korean insanity to China exceeds their usefulness as a diversion.
I’m guessing they released this on purpose to make a statement.
About time.
No other choice.
If they don't, war on a horrific scale will come to them again, and despite all the semi-educated idiot opinions, a simple glance at the globe displays the futility of that to their own best interests.
But then again, China seems unable to learn from history.
Odd, isn't it?
I was kind of hoping the North Koreans could send us some of their surplus food.
I agree with your traditional take on this.
I would suggest China is a realist here. They know North Korea is a wing nut enterprise. There’s only so much they can do.
You’ve got a nuclear state. It’s run by wing-nut nut-jobs. What’s China going to do, risk it’s own provinces?
This is a mess. It’s a colossal international melt-down....
They’ve had about 60 years to prepare for it.
Well, they’d be pretty derelict if they didn’t have contingency plans
(because that is what I would do)
With the cutting short possibly assisted by China itself, perhaps?
I don't think Red China would allow a unified Korea under a free, multiparty government, and South Korea may not want to pour its wealth into North Korea to make up for 69 years of Communist rule there. But the Chinese might find a way to install a saner Communist regime more like Vietnam or Laos.
Bump
The Chinese are faced with an interesting strategic decision. They can occupy North Korea if they're willing first to fight for it and then to repair it. What that gives them, though, is a direct border with South Korea without the buffer state that North Korea has been for half a century. Alternatively, they can allow the South to reclaim the North after the latter's government goes down. The advantage to China is the immediate and enormous cost to the South of reunification. According to a story on FR this evening, that was and continues to be a crippling cost to Germany under similar circumstances. Two trillion Euros. The mind boggles. But in a few decades Korea will be improving and then they'll have that 879-mile border with a presumably hostile state all over again.
Chinese planners are notorious for the long view, and so I don't think that will be all that attractive an alternative. Their preference must be for a continuation of the status quo, which is a client/satellite/buffer state in the North with a government less pathological than the present one. If I were betting on the Chinese strategic objectives here, that would be where I'd place my money.
There are problems even with that, naturally. That government must be established and maintained and the country fed by China. From a cost/benefit analysis, the longer they can delay action, the better from their point of view.
On the other hand, the Chinese may be able to persuade a unified Korean kingdom to align with China long term. After all, both nations despise Japan, and a unified Korea would be an economic boon to Manchuria in the long term,
A unified Korea would be neutralist; the American forces would have to leave the South. But the price for China would be akin to having Israel on their frontier.
In the short term, there's a country that is so wasted it is likely to be a burden not on the South, nor on China, nor on Asia as a whole, but the entire world. Somebody's going to have to pony up, and nobody's happy about it.
Anybody surprised?
“The advantage to China is the immediate and enormous cost to the South of reunification.”
Don’t underestimate the South’s ability simply to refuse more than minimal humanitarian aid.
Koreans are hard as nails.
You're certainly right about that. I can attest to it personally.
It would be a sweet thing to march a gaggle of the insufferable Korean leftwing college student population up to their Workers' Paradise and make them clean the place up themselves. Ever met any of those kids? The ROK Marines I met hate them with a passion.
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