Policy Briefs on Peace and Security in Northeast Asia

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.

The 2018 Tokyo Colloquium brought regional experts on peace and security in Northeast Asia together with policymakers and civil society organisations from US, China, Korea and Japan to discuss how to ensure stable peace in Northeast Asia. It was jointly organised by Toda Peace Institute, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, New Zealand on 1 February. While identifying some of the forces generating insecurity, and turbulence in the region, the Colloquium had particular focus on ways in which existential nuclear threat in the Korean peninsula could be dealt with through preventive diplomacy, dialogue and negotiations and whether denuclearisation of DPRK is the prerequisite for achieving negotiated solutions. Two panels of influential experts and policy makers were organised to share their insights and wisdom on these questions.