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What’s China’s relationship with North Korea really like?
The latest nuclear test by North Korea has focused the world’s attention on China. Much of the international community believes China is key to making North Korea behave. But just how powerfully can China pressure its only ally?
La Trobe’s Nick Bisley, Professor of International Relations and Executive Director of La Trobe Asia, unpacks their tricky partnership to reveal the limits to China’s control.
An uneasy partnership with geopolitical perks
Since the rapid division of the Korean Peninsula at the end of the Second World War, North Korea has acted as a physical and political buffer between China and US-allied South Korea. China supported North Korea during the Korean War (1950–1953). And in 1961, the Chinese and North Korean governments signed the Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty. The treaty formalised their relationship and remains in effect today.
According to Nick, the treaty means China is beholden to help North Korea if an outside military attack occurred. Notwithstanding this, he says, they are ‘uneasy bedfellows’.
“The treaty says, ‘We’re with you, we’ll protect you’. It doesn’t mean they have to like each other,” says Nick.
“Even though North Korea is right next to China, even though China had lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers defending North Korea, they never really got along. Through the Cold War, the principal supporter of North Korea was the Soviet Union, not China.”
Rather than being friendly allies, then, China and North Korea are partners of geopolitical necessity. Their relationship is fraught – historically, even their views on Communism differ. To date, three generations of the Kim family dictatorship have ruled North Korea. This family succession was something former Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-Tung ‘completely opposed’.
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No really a "puppet", eh?