For China, Northeast Asia remains a weak spot in its bid to secure its immediate borders, writes Zheng Jiyong for Foreign Affairs.
"Tensions between North and South Korea are rising, raising the possibility of conflict that could spill over the Korean Peninsula. Security coordination between Japan, South Korea, and the United States is also increasing, putting pressure on China, and North Korea’s established nuclear status is making Japan and South Korea anxious about their own security and could even eventually motivate them to acquire nuclear weapons themselves.
China is increasingly concerned about North Korea’s role in creating and exacerbating these risks—and about the need to change its strategy toward Pyongyang to manage these risks without further escalating tensions and destabilizing the region. Pyongyang is becoming increasingly unpredictable as its nuclear program gives it greater confidence. Decades of international sanctions, condemnation, and isolation have failed to compel Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons. On the contrary, they have hardened its resolve to maintain its nuclear program. And while North Korea still depends on China for economic support, its expanding security relationship with Russia has made it less dependent on Beijing alone than it has in the past. If a crisis involving North Korea erupts, China fears it could be sidelined as the conflict spirals out of control.
For nearly eight decades, Beijing’s relationship with Pyongyang has been based on historical ties, symbolic friendship, and informal coordination. Pyongyang’s unpredictability, however, has made that approach insufficient. China’s new strategy, symbolized by Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea in June, aims to bring Pyongyang back into China’s orbit and make bilateral relations more stable and manageable. Beijing does not want North Korea—one of the world’s few remaining communist states and a potential example of how China can effectively manage its relations with its allies—to fail. Beijing does not want to give up on its long-term goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. However, it recognizes that it needs better mechanisms to avoid surprises from Pyongyang that could destabilize China or provoke an expanded military presence by Japan, South Korea, and the United States.
Beijing is working to build structured high-level communication channels to receive earlier warnings of potential provocations from North Korea, to have more options for intervening before a crisis escalates, and to improve its ability to predict Pyongyang’s behavior. In addition, China is changing its approach: instead of viewing nuclear disarmament as a precondition for engaging with Pyongyang, it is focusing on reducing the risks that could lead to conflict. As global uncertainty grows, China hopes that closer contacts and clearer communication with North Korea can serve its most important goal: keeping its immediate neighborhood calm.
Delineating Borders
Although China and North Korea share a common border and are both communist states, their relationship has undergone a number of changes in the nearly eight decades since the two countries were founded. China's ties with North Korea have traditionally been based on diplomatic friendship, shared revolutionary memories, and the personal networks of senior leaders. During the Korean War, for example, the two countries drew closer. At other times, however, tensions have driven them apart. Since Kim Jong-un became North Korea's leader in late 2011, the country's relations with China have sharply deteriorated over disagreements over Pyongyang's actions, including Kim's pursuit of nuclear weapons and the arrest and execution of his uncle.
Beijing’s frustration with Pyongyang reached new heights in 2017, when North Korea conducted a nuclear test and multiple missile tests that showed it had mastered hydrogen bomb technology and was rapidly improving its nuclear capabilities. The test not only directly contradicted China’s stated position against North Korea’s nuclear weapons, but also put Beijing in a politically awkward position: it took place during China’s hosting of a summit of BRICS leaders. That same year, China voted in favor of five UN Security Council resolutions imposing severe sanctions on North Korea and tightening monitoring requirements. China’s concerns about a potential escalation of the conflict between North Korea and the United States even led to an invitation to the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, to visit China for talks on North Korea’s nuclear program and regional security.
Soon after, when it seemed that rapprochement between the United States and North Korea was possible, China changed course. In early 2018, after US President Donald Trump and Kim began discussing a possible summit, China feared that it would be excluded from talks on managing tensions on the Korean Peninsula. In the run-up to Kim’s meeting with Trump, which eventually took place in Singapore in June 2018, the North Korean leader wanted to consult with Xi about his experience in dealing with the US president. Beijing quickly extended an invitation to Kim to visit China. Kim visited the country in March, and then again in May and June of that year. After Xi returned the gesture and visited North Korea in the summer of 2019, cross-border trade flourished and bilateral relations were restored.
But when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020, North Korea closed its border and suspended all passenger and freight rail services and flights to China. The sudden disruption of key communication channels and contacts left Sino-North Korean relations in a dire state, as trade ground to a halt and economic ties largely severed. Meanwhile, North Korea has been moving closer to Russia, again raising China’s concerns that it could be left out.
Levers of influence from Russia
Today, China remains economically indispensable to North Korea. China accounts for over 70% of North Korea’s total foreign trade, approximately 60% of its food, and 75% of its consumer goods. China supplies North Korea with an estimated 520,000 tons of oil and between 500,000 and 800,000 tons of grain and fertilizer annually, all within the scope of exemptions from UN sanctions. This is a fundamental agreement to sustain the North Korean population and stabilize China’s northeastern border.
However, in the past few years, Russia has dramatically increased its support for North Korea. Since the signing of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty between North Korea and Russia in June 2024, Moscow has provided Pyongyang with security guarantees, military technology, energy supplies, export markets for labor, and support for circumventing sanctions. North Korea, in turn, has sent munitions and troops to fight on Russia’s side in its war in Ukraine.
The closer ties between Russia and North Korea have eased some of China’s obligation to provide economic aid and security guarantees to its northeastern neighbor. But they also give North Korea greater bargaining power and change its relationship with China. China used to be North Korea’s sole provider of support; now it is simply the largest among several pillars of support. North Korea’s foreign strategy has shifted from a model in which the country relied on China to balance pressure from the United States to a three-pronged scheme in which it used China to stabilize its economy, Russia to bolster its security, and American pressure to justify its nuclear program. By simultaneously strengthening its relations with China and Russia while maintaining a nuclear deterrent against the United States, North Korea is clearly showing its desire to replicate the Cold War model of maneuvering between China and the Soviet Union to maximize its benefits.
For Beijing, the biggest risk of deepening North Korea-Russia cooperation is that it provides an excellent excuse for Japan, South Korea, and the United States to accelerate their integration with each other. If North Korea and Russia continue to cooperate closely on nuclear weapons, Japan and South Korea will use the North Korean threat to justify strengthening their alliances with the United States. They may push for broader intelligence sharing, joint military exercises, and weapons integration. Ultimately, this would create an institutionalized military deterrence alliance aimed not only at North Korea but also at China, putting pressure on Beijing from multiple directions and heightening military tensions around potential flashpoints such as the Taiwan Strait.
Furthermore, the rivalry between China and the United States as great powers increases the likelihood that friction with Pyongyang will escalate into a direct confrontation between the United States and China. The Korean Peninsula is integral to Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy, its alliance system, and its regional deterrence efforts. China’s priority is to avoid unnecessary military conflict with the United States, but North Korea’s continued nuclear and missile provocations, deepening military cooperation with Russia, and its increasing unpredictability risk drawing China into a crisis. Beijing’s desire to avoid instability on the Korean Peninsula reflects its desire to stabilize relations with the United States and avoid potential escalation that could lead to direct conflict.
Frankly,
China can no longer rely on historical sentiment, personal friendships between leaders, and improvised diplomatic coordination to maintain its influence over an increasingly unpredictable, assertive, and aggressive North Korea. Instead, Beijing needs a way to manage its relations with Pyongyang that is more stable, based on regular and normal interactions, and allows China to set enforceable conditions for the assistance it provides. In other words, China needs an institutionally-oriented approach that places greater emphasis on formal cooperation mechanisms and communication channels.
China is focusing on establishing more hotlines between leaders, expanding regular diplomatic and security consultations, and improving formal notification mechanisms for border incidents and missile tests. Such efforts have already begun. In the past four months, China’s foreign minister and the head of the country’s top political advisory body have met with Kim in Pyongyang, and North Korea’s premier has visited China and met with Xi. Beijing also hopes to include North Korea in multilateral formats such as the Greater Mekong Initiative, an intergovernmental framework for economic cooperation in Northeast Asia, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as well as to develop regional dialogue mechanisms under Chinese leadership in which North Korea can participate.
China still does not welcome a nuclear North Korea and does not believe that its nuclear status should be without consequences. However, Beijing is increasingly aware that immediate nuclear disarmament or a clearly defined step-by-step roadmap to it is not realistic. A nuclear North Korea is far from ideal, but pressuring the unpredictable Pyongyang in a way that could lead to open conflict is a much worse option. Crisis prevention and the need for stability are now China’s top priorities on the Korean Peninsula.
Beijing can also use North Korea’s economic dependence on China to pressure Pyongyang to take concrete actions of restraint, such as refraining from provocative actions that could provoke an expanded military presence by Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Economic support is not simply the price China must pay to maintain North Korea’s stability; it is also a practical tool to influence Pyongyang’s actions and prevent Beijing from being pushed to the periphery of the region. China can tie humanitarian aid, opening up border trade, energy supplies, and infrastructure construction to North Korea’s willingness to limit its military threats. Only by tying the gradual expansion of cooperation to concrete evidence that North Korea is actually reducing the risks of conflict can China translate its economic advantages into real regional influence.
The summit in Pyongyang in June was the first step toward realizing this strategy. Relations between China and North Korea will have to follow a new logic: if North Korea wants greater cooperation with Beijing, it must meet Chinese demands for border stability, crisis communication, and military restraint. In return, China is ready to provide greater economic support, expand trade and investment, help develop infrastructure, and offer international political support. This is largely because Beijing wants to see a stable and economically viable North Korea that neither poses a threat to China’s security nor becomes a pawn in great-power rivalry.
With a changed North Korea, the emotional ties between former allies can no longer guarantee regional stability. Beijing is counting on the possibility that more ties and clearer borders will turn its influence over Pyongyang into effective crisis management tools.