Anju, April 20, 2012
CHINA DENIES selling missile transporters (TELs) to North Korea, but the U.N.’s sanctions committee will investigate. Look for China to block the report if it comes up with any evidence that China, yet again, violated UNSCR 1874, 1718, and 1695. That’s how China responded to a previous report that it helped North Korea sell missiles to Iran. Last year, it also blocked a U.N. report on North Korea’s uranium enrichment program. Look for them to do the same when the U.N. gets around to telling us whether China also facilitated the sale of North Korean chemical reagents to Syria. I could go on, so I did.
China has provided some assistance to North Korea’s missile program, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday, a week after the hermit state’s failed missile launch triggered broad international condemnation.
“I’m sure there’s been some help coming from China. I don’t know, you know, the exact extent of that,” Panetta told members of the House Armed Services Committee when asked whether China had been supporting North Korea’s missile program through “trade and technology exchanges.”
Let me just express what an uncomfortable feeling it is to see the mainstream closing in around me. And now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it is time to sell Trident submarines to Taiwan, yet?
IF ONLY HE TALKED TO THE NORTH KOREANS then like he talks about them now: I actually thought this article by Christopher Hill was interesting reading, even if I don’t agree with the ultimate conclusion that China is losing patience with North Korea.
China’s government has justified this burgeoning trade by claiming that North Korea will come to appreciate the wonders of a market economy. But that is simply an attempt to make a virtue out of necessity: for a country with one of the world’s largest and most storied bureaucracies, China has a surprisingly difficult time telling its business community not to do business with someone, especially a historic friend and ally.
Hill is correct that China doesn’t have complete control over the behavior of its businesses and banks, which must also obey the demands of the market, but I see no evidence of China telling any of its businesses not to do business with North Korea. The opposite is closer to the truth. Hill certainly hasn’t forgotten that in 2007, the Bank of China refused to help launder $25 million in North Korean crime proceeds, to lubricate his failed disarmament deal. If we were really serious about exerting pressure on North Korea, we’d start freezing the assets of Chinese companies doing business with North Korea, and proportionate amounts in the correspondent accounts of the banks that finance those transactions. Hill’s call for an end to bilateral trade between North Korea and China is surprising, but mostly pointless. It’s been obvious to me for years that China is using North Korea to play us. Even if you discount the TEL story, China has long supplied North Korea with WMD technology, facilitated North Korea’s trade in weapons and luxury goods, and fed and gifted the 2% who keep its regime in power (while enforcing the starvation of the other 98%).
SPEAKING OF CHRIS HILL, I’ve never stopped wondering why he went through a bruising confirmation fight in 2009, went to Baghdad as our Ambassador there, and then left after just 16 months. It wasn’t a particularly effective tenure, which may have been reason enough, but now I wonder if it had anything to do with the rumors (if they’re true) about a senior State Department person receiving what I’ll delicately refer to as “lip service” on the Embassy roof (HT to a reader). The rumor doesn’t say who engaged in the conduct, or when.
SO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT: Congress continues to react to North Korea’s Wile E. Coyote missile launch last week. In the House, the Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing where several members called for a tougher approach (which they didn’t exactly articulate, but ought to). In the Senate, John McCain criticized how our “we will never learn” North Korea policy begets a cycle of (our) appeasement and (their) provocation, and said that we should “judge our relationship with China by how you (China) handle North Korea.” If Congress wants to pressure China, words alone won’t suffice, but passing this legislation might help.