Amid N. Korea succession, China makes push for stability

BEIJING — In the days after Kim Jong Il’s death last month, China’s most powerful leaders hurried to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, where they fanned across the parquet floor and bowed three times to Kim’s portrait. One Chinese state councilor was “hardly” able to keep back tears, North Korea’s state-run news agency later said.

The show of public support lasted more than a week, with odes to the “Dear Leader” and congratulations to his young heir, Kim Jong Eun. But the message was also noteworthy for what it lacked: China said almost nothing about how North Korea’s new leadership should run or reform the country.

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The top U.S. Diplomat for Asian affairs says the U.S. And China plan to stay in "close contact" over developments in North Korea. Kurt Campbell, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, is visiting East Asia. (Jan 4)

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 A rare look inside North Korea as seen by photographer David Guttenfelder.

Pyongyang’s precarious power transfer has narrowed China’s goals on the Korean Peninsula, experts here say, turning Beijing from a benefactor and adviser into a protector — concerned foremost with preventing collapse, not pushing for improvement.

During Kim Jong Il’s final years, China drew North Korea close but also pressed for economic reform. Now, China has a shorter list of priorities. It wants to keep North Korea afloat and help Kim Jong Eun grow from a nominal leader into an established one.

China is trying to keep North Korea stable primarily by giving unconditional support to the succession and telling other countries to be cautious. Kim Jong Eun received a key endorsement Saturday from Chinese President Hu Jintao, who sent a note of congratulations when Kim was named North Korea’s top military commander. Shortly after Kim Jong Il’s death, China’s foreign minister had called his counterparts in Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States to urge “stability” in dealings with the North, the Beijing government reported.

Among the targets of that message was the State Department’s top Asia diplomat, Kurt M. Campbell, who was dispatched Tuesday on a three-city tour — Beijing, then Seoul, then Tokyo — largely to discuss strategy on dealing with Pyongyang’s new “great successor” and his cadre of backers.

“China wants no war and no chaos,” said Jin Canrong, an associate dean of international studies at Renmin University of China. “It still wants economic reform and denuclearization as well, but those are distant third priorities.”

For the short term, officials in South Korea and the United States don’t mind the Chinese approach: They would prefer the stability of a dictatorial North Korean government to the chaos of a failing one.

But that is the extent of their common ground. Stocked with nuclear weapons, long-range missiles and a 1.2-million-member military, North Korea represents a security threat to Washington and its closest Asian allies, Tokyo and Seoul. China, though, considers North Korea a security buffer against the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.

The notion of a democratized Korean Peninsula with U.S. troops positioned directly along the Chinese border — one scenario in a North Korean collapse — is threatening to China because of Washington’s other moves in the region. The Obama administration, describing the United States as a new “Pacific power,” has in recent months strengthened economic ties with the Southeast Asian countries it once neglected; it has also built relationships with some of Beijing’s neighbors, particularly Vietnam and Burma, threatening Chinese influence.