Carla Freeman's edited volume is a welcome addition to the academic literature on North Korea. The main contribution of the book is the bringing together of a wide variety of Chinese academic and policy voices to discuss their views on North Korea. As such, it will be useful for classes on Northeast Asian politics, and for academics and policymakers looking for a representative mix of Chinese thinkers' views on North Korea.
There is no unifying theme as such for the book, aside from presenting Chinese views of North Korea, but perhaps this is enough: one of the missing elements of Western understandings of North Korea, and more specifically of understandings of the relationship between China and North Korea, has been a lack of attention to how China actually thinks about North Korea. This is partly because few of China's experts on North Korea write much in English, and partly because the debate within China over the propriety or usefulness of the Chinese government's official policy on North Korea has traditionally been constrained, leading many Western commentators, particularly in the popular media, to assume that China stubbornly supports North Korea without any particular introspection.
As Freeman points out in her introductory chapter, however, this is changing, and voices within China have arisen (and have been allowed to continue speaking) to debate various aspects of North Korea policy, including whether to continue China's current (relatively) close relationship with North Korea at all. As Freeman notes, the authors in the volume range from those who argue for strong support for the relationship between China and North Korea, for strategic, historical and emotional reasons, to authors who are clearly exasperated with North Korea's behaviour, and question whether a relationship in which China shields North Korea from the full consequences of its actions is still appropriate in the new strategic environment.
The chapters deal with a variety of issues, with the contemporary and historical China–North Korea relationship understandably receiving the most in-depth coverage, although North Korea's economic policy, the larger regional strategic context and (indirectly) North Korean views of the strategic environment and domestic politics are also given attention. There are 15 chapters, but some stand out more than others.
Zhu Feng and Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga provide a particularly well-balanced chapter on China's strategic calculations vis-à-vis North Korea, noting that there are positive and negative, direct and indirect security implications for China that arise from the relationship with North Korea. While China bears considerable costs in maintaining the partnership, as Chinese leaders well know, they have to date concluded that the benefits outweigh the costs. With that said, the chapter presents the factors that Chinese leaders are likely to take into account if they do decide to change their policy.
Lin Jinsu's chapter on North Korea's evolving economic policy stands out among the chapters not only for its focus on economics, but also for its recognition that in many ways informal, marketizing trends on the ground in North Korea are often more important than whatever formal economic policies the North Korean state devises. This chapter can be read in conjunction with Li Nan's chapter on China's food aid to North Korea, which argues that China has a strategic interest in promoting North Korean economic development.
Shen Zhihua and Xia Yafeng's chapter points out that China's relationship with North Korea has often been fraught and even hostile over the years, putting the lie to the idea the two countries are inevitably and forever “as close as lips and teeth,” which Cheng Xiaohe reinforces in his chapter by noting that, during the Cold War, North Korea moved back and forth between the Soviet Union and China, as conditions suited. Their chapters suggest that, to the extent that North Korea is moving away from China now over concerns about becoming too entangled economically with its larger neighbour, there is nothing particularly new in North Korea's strategic manoeuvres.
The chapters by Jin Jingyi and Quan Hexiu take a similarly historical view, and look at China's role in the creation of North Korea, as well as the parallel relationships between the Republic of China and the Republic of Korea, and the People's Republic of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea after the Second World War.
At times it is unclear whether some of the chapters are actually describing the views of the Chinese authors, or merely explaining for a more general audience North Korea's own claims, such as Jin Zhe's chapter on the North Korean leadership succession, Li Yongchun's chapter on Juche (self-reliance) and Sŏn'gun (military-first) politics. But these chapters are useful for understanding what North Koreans argue about their own politics.
While there is no common argument among the authors, there are certain common themes across the chapters. There is little to no mention of North Korean human rights issues, and little questioning of the legitimacy of the North Korean state (although often there is frustration with North Korean behaviour). The authors clearly have China's interests at heart, and are generally agreed on what those interests are vis-à-vis North Korea: maintaining strategic stability in the region, denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, and promoting North Korean economic development. There is also, not surprisingly, greater sympathy for the strategic dilemmas that North Korea itself faces than one would find among similar Western authors, and perhaps more optimism that the current difficult strategic environment on and around the Korean peninsula can be improved. For this reason alone, to hear views on North Korea that are rarely expressed in the West, Freeman's book is worth reading.
