The Chinese and NK border
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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| China cancels troop leave along North Korean border |
| 2006-10-10 |
| DANDONG, CHINA - China has cancelled leave for troops along at least part of the border with North Korea, a mainland-controlled Hong Kong newspaper reported today, a day after the North announced a nuclear test. The Wen Wei Po said Chinese People’s Liberation Army troops ranged along the border in northeast China’s Jilin province “have had leave totally cancelled” and some forces were conducting “anti-chemical” training exercises. But trains between the two countries appeared to be running as normal. Officials and businessmen in Dandong, a bustling Chinese border city that looks across the Yalu River to North Korea, told Reuters that traffic across a bridge between the two countries would halt today except for special official cars. A customs official said the main customs posts on North Korea’s border with China would shut to most traffic, restricting one of the isolated North’s key portals to the outside world. It was unclear whether the moves were prompted by Pyongyang’s reported nuclear test and the strikingly sharp condemnation it drew from China, its longtime partner and aid-provider. Beijing condemned the test as “brazen” and Chinese President Hu Jintao warned the North and other powers against escalating the crisis. In a phone call with US President George W Bush, Hu warned North Korea “not to take any more actions that may worsen the situation”, according to the official Xinhua news agency. But Hu, who was feted as a friend of North Korea when he visited late last year, said there was still room for negotiations to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions. “China has consistently advocated denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and opposed nuclear proliferation, arguing for peaceful settlement of the Korean nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiation,” Hu said. China’s 1400-km border with impoverished North Korea is guarded by troops on both sides. The two communist neighbours are long-time allies, and in past years one of the Chinese troops’ main tasks has been stopping North Korean refugees crossing into China, where they seek work or asylum in other countries. Chinese commentators left no mistake that North Korea’s nuclear announcement had badly bruised relations. “North Korea’s holding of a nuclear test has offended China and put China in a very awkward diplomatic spot,” Xu Guangyu of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association told Ta Kung Pao, a Beijing-backed Hong Kong paper. North Korea “humiliated China” by carrying out a nuclear test in defiance of Beijing’s requests to curb its nuclear weapons ambitions, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said. Downer summoned North Korea’s ambassador in Australia, Chon Jae Hong, to his parliament house office for a protest meeting today, telling him “North Korea had humiliated the Chinese government”. “It was one thing to be offensive to the United States, Britain and Australia and their allies. But it is another thing to treat the Chinese, who have been such stalwart supporters of North Korea for such a long time, in this way,” Downer said. “The Chinese government had been working intensely to try and stop this testing from taking place.” Chon said the test was conducted “to defend the supreme national interest and security of our nation”. “We are under extreme threat from the US of a nuclear war,” he told reporters ahead of his meeting with Downer. World powers condemned North Korea on Monday after it said it had conducted its first underground nuclear test, and Washington sought harsh UN sanctions that could further isolate the communist state. US President George W Bush called it a “provocative act” that threatened international peace and security and said it required an immediate response from the UN Security Council. Downer said Australia would back UN sanctions and would ban North Korean officials visiting Australia, which is one of the few countries to have diplomatic ties with Pyongyang. But Australia would not expel Chon or cut off diplomatic ties. He said Australia had confirmed the test, but he stopped short of confirming whether nuclear material was involved, saying details were still being analysed. “There is some question about the size of the test and, if you like, the nature of the test,” he said. “We can conclude at this stage safely that this was a very small device by the standards of nuclear devices.” The test was a sharp blow to Chinese President Hu Jintao’s doctrine of using economic incentives and diplomatic coaxing to avert North Korea’s drive to become a nuclear weapons state. “China had always supported North Korea. Eighty per cent of North Korea’s aid comes from China, 50 per cent of North Korea’s trade is with China,” said Downer. “The North Koreans have treated China extremely shabbily in this particularly situation.” Oh yeah, poor poor ChiComs. So helpful and sincere and peace-loving - and just look at what this ingrate has done... |
| Posted by:.com |
| #19 49 Pan: If China gets into it with us the fight will not be good. China is an enemy I would rather not fight. I've always thought there was an element of wishful thinking in media and elite assumptions about China's intentions vis-a-vis North Korea. My assumptions are pretty simple - if China supports North Korea in deed while verbally criticizing it, I have to conclude that China does in fact support North Korea, policy-wise. I judge intentions by what people do, not what they say. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-10-10 20:04 |
| #18 I wouldn't be shocked if Japan isn't working on weaponizing the Mu-5 solid-fuel space booster (which is essentially a back-engineered AGM-118 Peacekeeper) using warhead designs that one of their good friends (wonder who?) let them borrow. |
| Posted by: Mike 2006-10-10 15:57 |
| #17 ZF, I hope youÂ’re wrong. Kicking the shit out of NK will be easy. If China gets into it with us the fight will not be good. China is an enemy I would rather not fight. Hay JAB, my apologies for coming off so hard on ya for this one. We paid dearly for that spit of land; ol dad was a sea bee there. I would hate to just walk away. Your point about the youth is well taken, I saw it in Germany as well - They screamed for us to leave and when we started to leave they begged for us to stay. When push comes to shove the folks that run SK will beg us to stay and help them. I am certainly of the belief that NK would have attacked years ago if we were not there and I'm sure SK's leaders believe this to be true. As for Japan, there is nowhere on earth where basing is more difficult. We are on Oky because the Japanese consider them second class. The environment there, politically, is more hostile than anywhere I have ever been. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-10-10 13:34 |
| #16 M: Putting troops on alert sounds like aggression against NKor, not protectiveness, not even by orwellian standards of communication. Especially in combination with talk about custom posts being shut to traffic. I'll have to disagree. Putting troops on alert is what happens if they have to prepare to move. China put 100,000 air defense troops in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Hundreds were killed during US bombing raids. I expect they will do the same for Kim during his hour of need. The closure of customs posts is probably to prevent civilian traffic from interfering with Chinese troop movements into North Korea. I understand China has purchased the latest Russian air defense batteries - newer than anything used during the invasion of Iraq. We may get to see how well they work if American bombers start carrying out missions over North Korea. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-10-10 11:56 |
| #15 I believe that at the end of the day the UNSC will issue the dreaded strongly worded memo, everyone will posture, no one will actually do anything, everyone will quietly accept the status quo, and we will all cheerfully move on to the next sex scandal. Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea will not create a nuclear capability. The democrates will take the House, try to impeach the president and generally just plain fiddle while Rome burns. |
| Posted by: kelly 2006-10-10 11:49 |
| #14 49 PAN, I understand your point. However, I would argue that it is SK that walked away with its so called 'sunshine policy' not the US. Until recently, they were an ally but since the early 1990s they have been working at cross purposes with us. A decent fraction of the SK electorate actually believes that we are in SK to keep the country divided and is proud that their fellow Koreans are defiant and developing atomic bombs. Generally, it is the younger Koreans who feel this way while the older generation is still grateful to the US. I Withdrawing now would simply ensure that we do not add to the total of 36,576 Americans who died stopping the communists while giving us more flexibility in how we handle the current threat from that regime. Besides, it is clear from the protests that our military presence in SK is at least as unpopular with the locals as our presence in Japan. In the words of one SK legislator, our troops are 'hostages' preventing the US from taking a more aggressive stance vs. Kim. I am not sure how the fact that we nuked Japan 60 years ago is relevant. Certainly they do not like a lot of American soldiers in Japan. However, they do seem to want to work with us to defend against NK's missile arsenal and to provide a nuclear umbrella. Currently our interests are aligned in this regard and the current Japanese government is the only regional power serious about countering the threat from NK. |
| Posted by: JAB 2006-10-10 11:22 |
| #13 Curb your dog, Hu. |
| Posted by: mojo 2006-10-10 10:52 |
| #12 Ya I agree, let's bail out of SK and let the chips fall where they may, who cares about them, bullshit. 36,576 Americans paid in combat for that country with their lives. Walking away from SK to form a stronger relationship with a country we once nuked, that by the way does not want our military there, is short sighted and an insult to the men and women who died defending SK. Attack Kim's govt, nuke him or whatever it takes to end this, I'm ok with it. But to walk away is wrong. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-10-10 10:32 |
| #11 I am tired of hearing about China and SK's concern about refugees. China thinks its a superpower. It has 1.6B people and can mobilize millions. NK has around 20MM. If it really is a world power, China would offer to occupy SK under the auspices of the UN and build whatever camps were necessary to provide relieve to NK as it began reconstruction. The US, Japan and Europe would gladly fund this effort. Getting them up to 1500 calories per day will not cost much at all. SK is a very wealthy country. NK's GDP is less than a 10th of SKs. It could easily fund reconstruction in NK over the course of a generation. Massive help from the West would always be there if they wanted it. NKs regime would have ended years ago if these 2 powers had wanted it to. Instead, China is trying to break down the US system of alliances and, therefore, likes the fact that the US has to expend geopolitical capital on the NK issue. SK Inc. likes having access to cheap (slave) labor up north and, as the most nationalist people on earth, also like how Kim sticks it to the US. Whiile understandable, if arguably shortsighted, neither country's NK policy is based on any consideration of morality or humanitarianism and both are directly at odds with the US. Therefore we need to get off of the peninsula and retrench on the Japan alliance and growing alliance with India. |
| Posted by: JAB 2006-10-10 09:50 |
| #10 The Chinese and NK border |
| Posted by: Jesing Ebbease3087 2006-10-10 09:49 |
| #9 China did this to send a massage. Did lil Kim slip out of the sock and run off on them ? Maybe lil Kim is too nuts to realize he is just a puppet. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-10-10 09:48 |
| #8 I think China is more worried about refugees than anything else on the border. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2006-10-10 09:34 |
| #7 Zhang, if that was the intended message, they badly bungled the transmission. Putting troops on alert sounds like aggression against NKor, not protectiveness, not even by orwellian standards of communication. Especially in combination with talk about custom posts being shut to traffic. Wonder if there's any likelihood of a NKor purge if the muttering about the test being unusually small blooms into a full-fledged bout of painful, public humiliation over their wet squib? |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2006-10-10 09:29 |
| #6 The Chinese are probably signalling that they will defend North Korea against US air strikes. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2006-10-10 09:16 |
| #5 And exJAG said it not only better, but faster, too. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-10-10 08:50 |
| #4 “We are under extreme threat from the US of a nuclear war,” he told reporters ahead of his meeting with Downer. No, but they do need to worry that the US will be able to carry the Security Council to vote on a total embargo, preventing the smuggling of arms, white slag (is that heroin? I've never known), and forged US$100 bills... thus cutting off North Korea's major sources of income. Besoeker, mostly the Chinese were guarding against infiltration by escaping civilians hoping to find work or food. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-10-10 08:49 |
| #3 They are pals. The troops on the Chinese side catch and remand any defectors the Nork guards missed. |
| Posted by: exJAG 2006-10-10 08:15 |
| #2 ChinaÂ’s 1400-km border with impoverished North Korea is guarded by troops on both sides. I thought they were pals? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-10-10 07:41 |
| #1 ChinaÂ’s 1400-km border with impoverished North Korea is guarded by troops on both sides. I thought they were pals? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-10-10 07:41 |