Retirement of Zhang Dejiang could shift China’s policy on North Korea
- The Australian
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China CorrespondentBeijingThe retirement of China’s third-ranked leader after tomorrow’s Communist Party congress is set to change the delicate balance on North Korea policy.
A debate is escalating between cadres who urge caution and those pushing to crack down on Pyongyang.
Zhang Dejiang, 70, is believed to be the foremost of the caution camp. He comes from Liaoning province, which borders North Korea, and studied Korean at Yanbian University in neighbouring Jilin before gaining a degree in economics from Kim Il-sung University in North Korea in 1980.
His expertise on Pyongyang is understood to have spurred his progress through the party’s elite.
He is deputy chairman of the National Security Commission, and chairman of the National People’s Congress standing committee.
Strategic advisory and analysis firm China Policy argues Mr Zhang’s departure will tip the balance of opinion at the top towards the analysis of Jia Qingguo, the dean of Peking University’s School of International Studies.
Professor Jia, who has a doctorate from Cornell University in the US, has urged Beijing to join — or co-ordinate — planning with the US and South Korea towards coping with imminent crisis on the peninsula, with the prospect emerging of a power struggle in North Korea as harsher sanctions bite.
A bitter online debate emerged — and, almost as interesting, was allowed to emerge by the authorities — between Professor Jia and a former police officer, Zhu Zhihua, a member of the Zhejiang Association of International relations.
Mr Zhu accused Professor Jia of “copying the US”, which had brainwashed him, and of conceding the prospect of a military attack on North Korea, saying the professor held a “wrong political standpoint” — a form of criticism much used in China’s Maoist past.
Professor Jia said “scholars should not be treated as suspects”, evoking Mr Zhu’s public security officer career.
Global Times editor Hu Xijin backed the professor, urging an end to politicising such an important issue.
China Policy says this face-off shows that “red lines for public discourse continue to be redrawn, with contingency planning no longer taboo. And while critics of ties with North Korea have multiplied and become much more vocal, conservatives have not yet given up the fight.”
The temperature in Beijing about North Korea, it says, “is rising to match Donald Trump’s Twitter feed”.
Singapore’s Chinese-language daily Lianhe Zaobao says the debate is between a “leftist” position that views the US and South Korea using North Korea’s nuclear program as a device to reduce China’s strategic interests and “rightist” elements that stress the threat a nuclearised Kim regime poses to Beijing, urging closer co-operation with the international community.
Zhu Feng, dean of Nanjing University’s School of International Relations, is firmly on Mr Jia’s side, warning of the cost of North Korea’s provocations to China’s security environment and global role, and of the risk of accidents — as well as blaming THAAD’s deployment on the North Korean deadlock.
Wang Peng, a research fellow at China’s Charhar Institute think tank, warns that the issue can become even more divisive if people equate support for North Korea’s nuclear program with support for its socialist system and by extension for China’s own system.
The debate remains “deeply divisive”, says China Policy, with Mr Hu describing the Zhu-Jia stand-off as the tip of the iceberg.
The “rightists”, it says, argue for more pressure to be placed on Pyongyang beyond talks, primarily viewing North Korea’s nuclear program as a threat to China’s security — strengthening the US-South Korea-Japan network and ramping up the risk of nuclear proliferation — and warning of the dangers of accidents to China’s northeast.
In contrast, the “leftists”, who may also be viewed as “conservatives”, see the US as the real threat and blame it for the deteriorating situation, while seeing North Korea continuing to play a valuable role as China’s buffer.
