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BOOK
REVIEW
The dragon's shadow
China's Rise and the Two Koreas by Scott
Snyder
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
China's unprecedented economic growth in the past two
decades opened avenues for its commercial influence to
expand extensively in East Asia. Economic cooperation
between China and South Korea, in particular, was
unstoppable and drowned out the former's long-standing
ideological closeness to North Korea. Flourishing economic
exchanges between China and South Korea were viewed by the
North as Beijing's betrayal of socialist ideals, but
Pyongyang was helpless to prevent Beijing's new economic
thrust in the region.
China's redirection of peninsular policy in favor of the
South not only shook the North but also gnawed at the
foundations of old
alliance systems in the entire region. American scholar
Scott Snyder's new book argues that although China's
economic influence on the peninsula may not have fully
transformed the security policies of the two Koreas, it does
challenge the primacy of the United States.
At the same time, the author is not sanguine about
predictions that formation of a new "outside alliance"
between Beijing and Seoul is only a matter of time. In his
estimate, "it is not clear" whether future circumstances
will force South Korea to snap its security alliance with
the US and end up bag and baggage in China's strategic
embrace.
Many South Koreans are uncomfortable with the notion of
subordination to China, an anxiety fueled by potential
flashpoints and disputes between the two countries. Wary of
economic over-dependence on China and worried about China
surpassing South Korea in global economic competitiveness,
Seoul signed a free-trade agreement with Washington in 2007.
A total strategic realignment of the South in favor of China
is thus unforeseeable.
The early chapters of Snyder's book survey why and how China
shifted from a "One Korea" stand to a "Two Koreas" policy.
As early as 1985, Chinese patriarch Deng Xiaoping had
decided that China needed healthy relations with South Korea
to benefit the business and economic interests of both
sides. Also intent on trade gains, the Roh Tae-woo
presidency in Seoul conceded to Chinese demands in 1992 by
cutting all South Korean links with Taiwan. The perceived
economic advantage was the prime enabler of Sino-South
Korean normalization.
As bilateral trade grew at double-digit rates for over 15
years, a corporate "China lobby" arose in Seoul. China's
vast pool of cheap labor and rising South Korean wage rates
drove copious South Korean foreign investment into Chinese
manufacturing units. Snyder adds that China's explicit
acknowledgement that South Korea was a model for its own
economic modernization also spurred relations. During the
Asian financial crisis of 1997, China even learned from
South Korea's mistakes in banking, currency and borrowing
policies.
China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in
2001 triggered a second wave of "China fever" in South
Korea, which became the leading foreign investor in China by
2004. Continuing the learning trend, Chinese workers on
short-term overseas training contracts spent time in South
Korea acquiring new skills.
By 2005, however, South Korean firms began hurting from
Chinese competition in international markets. As China's
production capacity in higher value-added sectors improved,
it faced South Korean anti-dumping suits at the WTO. Thus
far, the two sides have averted retaliatory trade measures,
but public perceptions are hardening that each is taking
undue advantage of the other.
China's new foreign direct investment policies requiring
technology transfer and production for the Chinese domestic
consumer market are frustrating South Korean-invested firms.
Industrial espionage by Chinese employees and
sub-contractors at South Korean-owned companies is
threatening the South's thinning technological lead over
China. Snyder quotes a South Korean observer that the
economic relationship "will be transformed into a kind of
competition and then a China problem and China threat as
time goes by". (p 77)
In the political sphere, China and South Korea have been
cooperating through regional institutions and dialogues,
with shared objectives on the thorny North Korean nuclear
issue. But since 2004, problems that had been swept under
the carpet to keep oiling the economic partnership could no
longer be hidden. China's claims on the ancient Koguryo
kingdom inflamed South Korean nationalism and raised
specters of a China-centered East Asian order that would
dent Korean autonomy.
China's access to mining and natural resource concessions in
North Korea sparked renewed anxieties in the South that
Beijing would thwart a Seoul-led Korean reunification
process. In the past few years, harsh Chinese crackdowns on
North Korean refugees have also drawn the ire of South
Korean human-rights activists.
The middle chapters of Snyder's book address the hot-button
topic of Sino-North Korean relations. Chinese policymakers
justify massive food and energy aid to Pyongyang as a
"strategic" necessity to forestall a regime collapse and
refugee influx from the North. China has tried to shift
trade with the North from subsidies to market-based terms,
but failed as Pyongyang sank further into an economic
morass.
In 2001, North Korean supremo Kim Jong-il displayed a burst
of enthusiasm for the Chinese model of economic growth, but
he flattered to deceive. China had to bribe North Korea with
assistance worth US$50 million in 2004 to get Pyongyang to
participate in the six-party talks. In 2005, China unveiled
a $2 billion "comprehensive assistance package" to "bind Kim
Jong-il closer to Beijing" (p 126) and to ease the pressures
on the Korean-populated north-eastern border region of
China.
Snyder deduces a contradiction between China's need to keep
North Korea in its orbit for a "foothold on the peninsula"
(p145) and its rhetorical support for Korean reunification.
A corollary contradiction lies in China's interest in
denuclearizing the peninsula and its insistence that such an
outcome not enhance the "guiding role" of the US in the
region.
Pyongyang's nuclear test in 2006 "shocked" China as it had
been advising Kim Jong-il not to resort to such extreme
measures. After that event, two schools on the North have
emerged in China. One camp contends that "we cannot slap the
DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] down as that
would undermine China's influence over North Korea and give
the US the upper hand". (p 155)
The other camp wants Beijing to be Washington's
"constructive collaborator" in pushing Pyongyang to
denuclearize. The former's hand seems stronger overall, as
China has been reluctant to coerce the North to eschew
nuclear brinkmanship. Snyder attributes this stance to
China's premonition that punitive measures would "further
diminish Beijing's leverage" on the peninsula. (p 158)
The author next explores the triangle wherein South Korea
depends on China for economic growth and on the US for
security. He refers to the leading South Korean thinker
Chung Jae-ho's view that a strategic realignment by Seoul
towards Beijing and away from Washington is "highly
unlikely, at least in the near term". (p 166) The US and
South Korea, says Snyder, are "still in a 'marriage', even
if it might not always seem so stable". (p 168) The election
of the pro-US Lee Myung-bak as South Korea's president in
2007 in fact surprised Chinese strategists who presumed that
the South was a "low-hanging fruit ripened by Sino-South
Korean trade". (p 176)
Although South Korea's quasi-alliance with Japan has clear
counterbalancing intent against China, it is dogged by
recurring tensions over historical crimes. So bitter is
Seoul's row with Tokyo on the contents of Japanese textbooks
that it prompts US officials to "doubt South Korea's
reliability as an ally". (p 192) Seoul wants to avoid being
dragged into a "new Cold War" in Asia that might jeopardize
its economic partnership with China. Even conservative South
Korean strategists now "think twice about Chinese
perceptions" (p 196) before contemplating participation in
multilateral security systems aimed at hedging against
China's rise.
Yet, countervailing political and economic factors have made
South Koreans tread gingerly, lest they land in the Chinese
lap. The South Korean public's resistance to Chinese
hegemony is emotional and deep-seated, just as strong as it
is towards American highhandedness. Korean "anti-hegemonism”
and Chinese suspicions that the US could manipulate the
peninsular reunification project leave open the old
characteristic of regional rivalries in Northeast Asia. So,
despite major changes in economic relationships since the
Sino-South Korean entente, the security picture is as
contested as it was during the Cold War.
Snyder's account is decidedly pro-American for endorsing
Washington's claim that its military footprint is a force
for good that stabilizes the region. He overlooks the
perspective that the US itself is a stumbling block for
Korean reunification. That said, his core theme about China
attempting to leverage economic interdependence for
strategic ends helps appraise how the dragon's shadow is
lengthening over East Asia.
China's Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics,
Security by Scott Snyder. Lynne Rienner Publishers,
Boulder, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-58826-622-4. Price: US$22.50, 241
Pages.
Sreeram Chaulia is associate professor of world
politics at the Jindal Global Law School in Sonipat, India.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.) |
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