Policy Briefs on Peace and Security in Northeast Asia

China and India are the two most populous countries in the world and relations between them oscillate between conflict, competition and cooperation. Both countries have dynamic economies. They have fought a war with each other, continue to tussle over territory at their shared border and both invest heavily in their military posture. Their trade relations have greatly improved and cordial cooperation in various global and regional forums brought them closer to each other in selected political and economic areas. Is there hope for better conflict management, for fruitful competition, and for improving collaboration?

After missile launches and threats of ‘fire and fury’ in 2017, international relations on the Korean peninsula have improved in 2018. The inter-Korean peace process pursued by President Moon Jae-in and Chairman Kim Jong-un and the summit meetings of 2018 suggest there may be an opportunity for consolidating this improvement. This raises three central questions. How can the Korean peninsula be denuclearised? What are the prospects of a formal declaration of the end of the Korean war? How can the armistice be turned into a permanent peace agreement?

The efforts of the international community to prevent, freeze or stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme experienced many ups and downs since 1985 when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) joined the NPT.1 Phases of promising agreements with plans for reintegrating a weapon-free North Korea into the international community were superseded by periods of heightened tensions with bellicose policies of the North Korean government and retaliatory hostile responses and maximum pressure by the US government.

Chung-in Moon, Special Adviser for Foreign Affairs and National Security to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, comments in his recent article in Foreign Affairs (April 30, 2018) that the April 2018 summit between North and South Korea represents ‘real progress and lays the groundwork for lasting peace.’ Chung-in Moon served as adviser to Kim Dae-Jung and has attended the past three summits between the two Koreas (in 2000, 2007, and 2018). From this perspective, he feels that the recent summit could be considered a historic achievement. “Moon and Kim did not just make high-level commitments; they also laid out specific timetables for implementing them and took concrete steps that will have immediate effects in facilitating cooperation and preventing conflict” on the Korean peninsula, he writes. The article suggests this offers hope that a comprehensive deal including denuclearization by North Korea may be achievable in a couple of years.

This paper explores China’s relationship with North Korea. In particular it focuses attention on China’s leverage in relation to the DPRK’s nuclear and missile development programme. The recent announcement of direct talks between the leaders of North Korea and the United States on these and other issues creates both opportunities and concerns for China. On the one hand China has expressed support for a positive outcome. On the other, these talks reinforce Chinese anxieties about being excluded from the discussions and the detrimental consequences of this exclusion. This anxiety comes on top of a generalised concern about either a conventional or nuclear war on China’s border. This article explores these dilemmas as China ponders its role in Korean and wider East Asian affairs.