The Chinese-Korean Border Issue: An Analysis of a Contested Frontier (original) (raw)
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Sino-Korean Relations: Triangle of Tension, or Balancing a Divided Peninsula?
International Journal, 1995
BACKGROUND: HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY Geography has played a major role in the destiny of the Korean peoplelocated as they were at the convergence of three empires at the beginning of the 2oth century. War and occupation were familiar to Koreans, but nothing prepared them for the ferocity of this century. A traditional policy of sadae (serving the powerful) had ameliorated some of the destructive aspects of nearby powers, and today Korea has no choice but to accept the reality of a dangerous geopolitical neighbourhood. The Korean peninsula has long been a strategic buffer between Japan and China, subject to additional pressures from Russian/Soviet expansion in the Far East. For this reason, China's policy toward Korea has been either to dominate it or deny it to another power. Despite a close relationship with North Korea in the 195os, based on support against the United States in the Korean War, the isolationist nationalism of President Kim Il Sung kept China at a distance, while Russian influence dominated in diplomacy, military advice, and economic aid. For centuries, China's northeastern frontier has been crucial to its security. Shanhaiguan, where the Great Wall ends at the sea, was one of several vulnerable passes which had to be guarded against intrusion by nomads from the north. When it
China's Relations with the Korean Peninsula
Show Page Numbers On This Page Download PDF China's Relations with the Korean Peninsula This chapter looks across nearly four decades of Chinese and international academic and think tank publications on China's relations with the Korean peninsula to identify patterns, areas of focus, key methodological approaches, and analytical perspectives.1 It shows that scholarship on China's relations with the two Koreas has closely mirrored the vicissitudes of developments on the Korean peninsula and finds that scholars who study the relationship between China and the Korean peninsula have several principal concerns. These include interactions among China and other major powers within the region (particularly the United States); China's attitudes toward North Korea's nuclear program; China's relationship with South Korea and its effect on changes in Seoul's policy toward Pyongyang; and perceptions of how Beijing assesses the costs and benefits of its relationship with Pyongyang as it strengthens its ties to Seoul. Different issues preoccupy scholars writing from different countries, however. The chapter's discussion of international scholarship focuses on examples from South Korea- and US-based research. Its survey of work by South Korean scholars indicates that they write from a perspective that reflects an acute awareness of China's geographic proximity and its historical role, including its projection of military force on the Korean peninsula and special relationship with Pyongyang, alongside more distant memories of Korea's subservient relationship to China in its premodern past. In contrast, US scholars have tended to write extensively on how China's role influences prospects for reunification on the peninsula, South Korea's security relationship with the United States, the prospects for Northeast Asian regionalism, and South Korean identity. In more recent years, US-based scholarship has increasingly addressed China's relations with North Korea, including the impact of its policies on the effectiveness of United Nations sanctions targeting North Korea's nuclear program. Of the three sources of writings on China's interactions with the Korean peninsula examined in this chapter, it is Chinese writings that have changed the most in recent decades. For one, analyses that take an evaluative approach resulting in conclusions that find fault with Beijing's policy toward the Korean peninsula have become far more mainstream in recent years. Indeed, Pyongyang's successive nuclear tests have met with increasingly lively debate among Chinese scholars in universities and think tanks over the costs and benefits of Beijing's relationship with North Korea – perhaps evidence of a parallel debate within official Chinese policy circles.
The Sino-North Korean relation: using the past to understand the present.docx
The nature of the Sino-North Korean relation is one of the key issues in foreign policy, as the East Asian context became, in the post-Cold War era, the field of confrontation between the US and China. In this context, it is crucial to assess whether an alliance still exists between an increasingly provocative North Korea, and China, which is trying to conciliate its historical ideological ties with the effort of being recognised as a “responsible great power” (Noesselt 2014, 1313; Zhu 2016, 582). In particular, as the Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty signed in 1961 is technically valid until 2021, it is fundamental to understand whether the current divergence over the North Korean nuclear programme will result in a Chinese abandonment of its historical ally. Hence, this piece of writing will assess the limits of the contemporary Sino-North Korean cooperation by analysing the nature of their past relations and the increasingly nationalistic narratives that are currently employed by both sides with regards to their shared past during the tributary relations period and to the Korean War of 1950-53. A particular focus will be cast upon Korea past and current strategy of playing off more powerful states against each other, which has been defined as “tail wagging the dog” (Zhu 2016) or “tyranny of weak” (Armstrong 2013).
Enemy, Homager or Equal Partner?: Evolving Korea-China Relations
The Journal of International and Area Studies, 2012
Since the formal establishment of South Korea (hereafter, Korea)-the People’s Republic of China (hereafter, China) relations in 1992, the bilateral relationship has recorded tremendous success in terms of trade volume, cooperation on the North Korean nuclear crisis, and the magnitude of exchanges in various areas. However, it is also true that the bilateral relations still remain far from satisfaction in terms of depth and degree of communication, crisis management, and a shared vision. Given Korean’s psychological alertness and apprehension formed over a long history of contacts with China, differences in political system, mutual misperceptions, and degree of understanding, these problems cast serious challenges for future relations between the two countries. In the future, KoreaChina relations could be sour and bumpy if the Korean government relies excessively on securityoriented approaches, centering on its alliance with the U.S. Korea needs to exercise a “creative middle power-p...
The use of the plural “borderlands” already in the book title unfolds the epistemological tension of considering cross-border areas as a homogeneous unit, inviting the reader to reflect on a multitude of spaces, people, economic flows, past histories, and future possibilities. While acknowledging the difficulty of weaving a constructive network of discourses among the many interactions, failures, and unresolved issues that characterise the Sino-North Korean border area (p. 17), the editors nonetheless show their ability to assemble eighteen essays that force the view on its socio-spatial complexity and challenge the traditional narrative of Chinese hegemony.
China's changing relations with the two Koreas
UNISCI Discussion Papers, 2003
This paper will first examine the evolving strategic issues that the North Korean Nuclear Program is arousing in Northeast Asia. Then, it will look at China's role as a mediator between the US and North Korea but also its relations between the two Koreas to bring the peace on the ...