BRUSSELS - Beijing's leadership role in the Six Party Talks on North Korea once embodied U.S. hopes that China would become a responsible stakeholder in issues of regional and global security. But its behavior toward an erratic and belligerent Pyongyang increasingly belies them.
China now has become almost reflexively dismissive of international calls to assume responsibility for restraining North Korea. Beijing contends that its current approach of providing virtually unconditional protection to Pyongyang is driven by an overriding concern for stability in its neighborhood and the need to avoid cornering an unpredictable regime in transition.
But China's unwillingness to pursue a balanced response to North Korean aggression is becoming a source of regional instability in its own right. By blocking any effective international response to the sinking of the Cheonan or the shelling of Yeonpyeong, and failing to take credible bilateral measures of its own, it is Seoul that is being pushed into a corner by Beijing. The result, a shortening of the odds on a military rather than a diplomatic escalation on the peninsula in the event of future North Korean attacks, is as harmful to China's interests as anyone else's.
The cables from U.S. diplomats in Beijing published by WikiLeaks have been read as offering hope that Beijing is rethinking its approach. Besides providing evidence of China's frustration with Pyongyang's "spoiled child" behavior, the documents cite the South Korean national security adviser's striking claim to have received assurances from Chinese officials that they believe the peninsula should be reunified under Seoul's control. This is wishful thinking. Anyone looking for a shift in China's approach would observe precisely the opposite phenomenon: while there has undoubtedly been private griping and debate about its North Korea policy, Beijing has notably strengthened its relationship with Pyongyang and has been far less willing to take publicly critical positions than it was a few years ago.
Despite its reputation as the DPRK's protector-in-chief, China did not provide such unequivocal backing in the past. Beijing is believed to have cut off oil supplies in 2003 when Pyongyang pulled out of the NPT. In 2006, it denounced North Korea's nuclear test as "brazen," agreed to a biting UN Security Council Resolution, and cooperated in the freezing of DPRK banking assets. China's bottom line never changed: its concern to avoid overly alienating or weakening the regime has always trumped any desire to force a resolution of any of the issues at stake. But Chinese willingness at least to calibrate its responses to North Korean provocations was an essential element of international efforts to moderate Pyongyang's behavior.
The last three years - and recent months in particular - have seen that calibration virtually disappear. Following the sharpest of the disputes between Beijing and Pyongyang after its first nuclear test, China decided that the re-establishment of closer bilateral ties and the extension of its influence in the country should not be held hostage to the denuclearization issue. Economic and political support from China has since expanded, just as the Lee administration in South Korea has been cutting it back. More recently, China's worries about regime weakness have grown considerably. Kim Jong Il's failing health, a disastrous attempt at currency reform, and uncertainty about succession arrangements shifted Beijing's calculus to focus almost exclusively on considerations of internal stability - and pushed Kim to become yet more reliant on China's support across its vulnerable transition period.
Chinese concerns about stability are not just rhetorical. At points they have focused on the implications of an actual collapse of the state: the loss of a strategic buffer, the prospect of hundreds of thousands of refugees flowing into China, and the risk of confrontation with American or South Korean troops in the event of an uncoordinated set of military interventions.
But since the succession arrangements for Kim Jong Un were put in place, it appears that Chinese officials have become more confident about the capacity of the North Korean state to hold together, at least until Kim Jong Il himself dies. Of greater concern to China is the erratic international behavior of the regime while it consolidates itself. Beijing's calculation has been that "hugging them close" with economic support and diplomatic protection will reduce the likelihood of Pyongyang lashing out.
This strategy is becoming increasingly indefensible. China's position of uncritical backing to Pyongyang over the Cheonan sinking had already laid it open to charges of irresponsibility. But following a near-identical response to North Korea's artillery attack last week, when it was the only P5 member to refuse to condemn a classic act of aggression, its approach can now barely be distinguished from a policy of giving Pyongyang carte blanche to stage international provocations at will.
The repercussions are already serious. China has suffered substantial damage to its relations with Seoul, and has watched the tightening of security cooperation between the United States, South Korea, and Japan with discomfort. By nullifying multilateral efforts even to apportion responsibility for the attacks, China has also forced South Korea to augment its own efforts at military deterrence, with demonstrably high risks of miscalculation.
If, in the weeks ahead, Beijing is unable to provide reassurances that it has privately read the riot act to the North Koreans, the result of China's supposed commitment to neighborhood stability will be a heightened risk of war on the Korean peninsula.