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Saturday, March 12, 20051110687900
China Wants Barnett's Deal
"Chinese Article Says Dear Leader Only Fat Person in North Korea," by Michael Rank, NKZone, http://www.nkzone.org/nkzone/entry/2005/03/chinese_article.php#comments,
An web article on a news site of the Middle Kingdom really, really hints the ChiComms want Barnett's trade: Taiwan for North Korea.
There's a very interesting Chinese look at North Korea on a website specialising in the hermit kingdom, it compares NK with China during the Cultural Revolution or Great Leap Forward, paints a generally bleak picture of a starving country where there is much anti-Chinese resentment. It's anonymous and is written from a personal perspective, but it's on a well established website and seems to reflect a strand of official opinion.
It's roughly comparable with the highly critical article in the Chinese journal Strategy and Management (“S&M” to its fans) which was censored last summer, though a bit less official. S&M was closed down for publishing this article, incidentally, and its website has been wiped.
A short introduction by the “webmaster” quotes the U.N. as saying at least two million people died of starvation in the 90s as the country was arming itself with nuclear weapons, maintained the world's fifth biggest army, etc. “This is the Kim family's choice, not the choice of the North Korean people. The article says here are no fat people in North Korea but this is not right, Kim Jung-il's fat stomach which the webmaster has seen on television continues to make a deep impression on him.”
...
In recent years Chinese magazines have published long articles about the Korean war, including documents from ex-Soviet archives, saying Stalin and the NKs placed more importance on the Korean problem than on Taiwan, which worried the Chinese...
Later when China and the Soviet Union quarrelled over ideology and international leadership, NK often supported Moscow over Beijing, ordinary NK people became biassed against China because of media attacks.
NK became extremely unhappy when China established diplomatic relations with SK, so NK voted against Beijing [or abstained???] hosting the Olympics in 2000 [that doesn't sound right to me, can anyone confirm/comment - Michael], greatly upsetting large numbers of Chinese people.
Not only this, but NK has also quietly referred to Taiwan as the Republic of China and “honoured nation” in order to gain economic advantage [to refer to Taiwan as a “nation” is of course anathema to Beijing].
Not that the trade would work. Unless Taiwan's and Japan's evolution from virtual nuclear state to actual nuclear power is a U.S. foreign policy goal... which it might be.
22:25 Posted by Dan tdaxp in China, Korea, Thomas Barnett | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this | Tags: north korea