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On Oct. 10, the North Korean capital witnessed the largest military parade in its history. It was held to celebrate the putative 70th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Worker's Party. The presence of a large Chinese delegation headed by Liu Yunshan was perhaps the most significant group visiting from overseas. Liu is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, the highest official from China to visit North Korea since Kim Jong-un became leader in Pyongyang.
Liu and his delegation were given the full red-carpet treatment and Kim spent a lot of time chatting to his special guest. Liu also delivered a personal letter from Chinese President Xi Jinping. The letter was lengthy and warm, presenting a marked contrast from the terse and short congratulatory notes exchanged by Pyongyang and Beijing over the last few years.
Indeed, since 2012, relations between the two neighbouring countries, technically allies, have hit a nadir. Their relations have not been this bad since the early 1990s. Once thriving official exchanges came to a standstill, and a number of joint projects were suddenly frozen ― like, say, a nearly completed new cross-border bridge in Dandong, the low Yalu River.
Sometimes, the North Korean media even hinted at malevolence in China's North Korea policy. For example, when Kim's uncle Jhang Seong-taek was arrested and executed in 2013, he was accused of selling the country's resources at ultra-low prices to a third country (everyone knew this was China) and also of renting property to the same country at bargain basement prices.
All of this looked rather strange because China has remained by far the most important of North Korea's trade partners. In 2014, North Korean trade with China hit $6.9 billion. This constituted roughly 75 percent of North Korea' total foreign trade.
China might be the world's only country that currently has the economic resources, political need and practical capabilities to invest in North Korea on a relatively large scale. Politically, it also has vested interest in keeping North Korea afloat.
It appears that the crisis in relations had causes on both sides. The North Koreans had obviously begun to worry that the Chinese had acquired too much influence over their external trade. North Korean diplomacy has, for decades, been premised on the assumption that no one country should ever be allowed to dominate Pyongyang's economic exchanges.
This might be the reason why the North Korean government began to entertain hopes that the Russians would become a source of investment, as well as being a nice and forgiving foreign trade partner – as occurred during Soviet times. Hence, there has been a warming of political relations with Russia. However, when it comes to the economy, Russia has remained insignificant. Russo-North Korean trade totalled a mere $0.1 billion in 2014 – a great contrast with trade with China, which in 2014 approached $6.9 billion.
The Chinese side also had reason to be unhappy about Pyongyang. Xi Jinping and his advisors are obviously not impressed by North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. They have good reason to believe that these programs constitute indirect threats to China and also make it far more difficult to reduce the presence of the U.S. military in the region. It is also possible that the Chinese have at long last tired of North Korean reluctance to embrace a Chinese-style economic reform agenda.
Last, but not least, bad chemistry between the two heads of state cannot be ruled out as a factor. Kim seemingly does not like Xi Jinping ― and this is apparently a mutual feeling.
However, in spite of all this, the basics have not changed: China still needs a stable and preferably divided Korean peninsula with North Korea acting as a useful buffer zone. Any serious internal crisis in North Korea goes against Chinese interests, and the slow decline in relations between the two sides gives China less leverage over Pyongyang. On the other end, the North Korean leaders have once again realized that they cannot replace China with Russia or any other country. Hence, it makes sense to start rebuilding bridges (perhaps, in the most literal sense, too).
Of course, the unusually cordial welcome granted to Liu Yunshan does not give us sufficient grounds to say that a thaw has begun. We will have to wait and see, but there are reasons to believe that the pendulum has begun to swing back, and that relations between China and North Korea will get better, and their uneasy alliance is going to be reborn.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
