Outside the Beltway

They Make a Desert . . .

· Tuesday, May 25, 2010 · 1 comment

. . . and call it peace. The Chinese have called for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula:

North Korean ally China on Tuesday called for restraint amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula, but again declined to endorse Seoul’s claim that Pyongyang sunk one of its warships.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Beijing shares responsibility for ensuring peace on the Korean peninsula and opposes any destabilizing actions.

“China hopes all parties will stay calm and exercise restraint … to avoid escalation,” Mr. Jiang told reporters at a regularly scheduled news conference.

Mr. Jiang avoided any direct mention of the South’s claim that an international investigation has proved a North Korean torpedo split apart the navy ship Cheonan, killing 46 sailors.

The March 26 incident has drawn new attention to Beijing’s role as Pyongyang’s main source of economic aid and political support. China, which last month hosted North Korea’s reclusive leader Kim Jong Il on a rare foreign visit, is coming under increasing pressure from the U.S. and South Korea to use its influence with Pyongyang to help resolve the crisis.

There will never be peace on the Korean peninsula as long as the current regime holds power in North Korea. The Chinese determination to prop up that regime maintains a state of conflict just short of war rather than ensuring peace. It also starves and impoverishes the people of North Korea. That the typically pragmatic Chinese leadership insists on supporting the North Korean regime suggests to me that in their view none of the alternatives are particularly good for them and they’re merely picking the one they see as least bad and using salesmanship to convince the world that it’s a Good Thing.

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Dave Schuler
About Dave Schuler
Over the years Dave Schuler has worked as a martial arts instructor, a handyman, a musician, a cook, and a translator. He's owned his own company for the last thirty years and has a post-graduate degree in his field. He comes from a family of politicians, teachers, and vaudeville entertainers. All-in-all a pretty good preparation for blogging. He has contributed to OTB since November 2006 but mostly writes at his own blog, The Glittering Eye, which he started in March 2004.

Comments

  1. Brett says:
    Tuesday, 25 May 2010 at 13:16

    That the typically pragmatic Chinese leadership insists on supporting the North Korean regime suggests to me that in their view none of the alternatives are particularly good for them and they’re merely picking the one they see as least bad and using salesmanship to convince the world that it’s a Good Thing.

    It is a good thing . . . for everybody that isn’t North Korean. The Chinese get to avoid having a bunch of refugees streaming across their border, the South Koreans get to put off a brutally expensive reconstruction of the North as long as possible, the US gets to avoid being draw into a war at the same time as we’re off doing quixotic nation-building exercises, and so forth.

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