China has started mobilizing military forces around the Korean peninsula
in response to rising tensions that follow recent threats by North
Korea to launch missile attacks against its southern neighbor and the
United States.
According to US officials, Pyongyang’s declaration
of a ‘state of war’ against South Korea has led to the Chinese People’s
Liberation Army (PLA) to increase its military presence on the border
with the North. The officials say the process has been going on since
mid-March, and includes troop movements and readying fighter jets. The
PLA is now at ‘Level One’ readiness, its highest.
Chinese forces,
including tanks and armored personnel carriers, have been spotted in
the city of Ji’an and near the Yalu River, which splits China and North
Korea. Other border regions were also reportedly being patrolled by
planes.
China has also been conducting live-firing naval
exercises in the Yellow Sea, scheduled to end on Monday. The move is
widely viewed as open support for North Korea, which continues to show
extreme opposition to the US-South Korean military drills that are to
last until May.
The news comes as the US deployed its USS
Fitzgerald destroyer off the coast of North Korea, adding to its Sunday
deployment of F-22 fighter jets to take part in the drills with the
friendly South, which has further served to heighten tensions on the
peninsula.
Meanwhile, North Korea has been mobilizing its short
and medium-range missile arsenal, according to analyses of satellite
imagery. Officials say Pyongyang is set to test its new KN-08
medium-range mobile missile; they say preparations have been spotted in
the past. Pyongyang claims that since March 26, its forces have been
placed on their highest possible status of alert.
Although
officials believe Pyongyang will not provoke Seoul during the war games,
they also fear that a miscalculation by South Korea could lead to
all-out war, following its promise of retaliation against the North,
should it launch its missiles first.
North
Korea and China have maintained a long-standing defense treaty under
which Beijing is to come to Pyongyang’s aid in the event of an attack.
The last time this was put into practice was during the Korean War, when
tens of thousands of Chinese volunteer forces were deployed on the
Korean Peninsula. The relationship between the two countries is often
referred to as being “as close as lips and teeth” by Chinese military
spokesmen.
Despite the heated tensions leading to
an apparent disruption in trade and commerce between China and North
Korea, the two are already making future plans to bolster their economic
ties. March 27 saw the announcement of a new high-speed railway, as
well as a special highway passenger line.
Still, many in Chinese
circles have shown displeasure at Pyongyang’s seemingly aggressive
relationship with Seoul and Washington. A Chinese official, speaking to
Reuters on condition of anonymity, has testified that US presence in the
region is a helpful restraint against an unpredictable Kim Jong-un,
which many believe to be the real reason Beijing has not been strong in
its criticism of the amassing of US forces in the region.
Furthermore,
Chinese websites and blogs could sometimes be found openly bashing the
North Korean leader for an apparent mishandling of the situation in the
region, playing diplomatic games amid chronic food shortages in his
country. An editor at the country’s Study Times newspaper was recently
suspended for openly criticizing China for abandoning North Korea.
Expert opinion differs on what China’s exact position is in the unfolding regional crisis.
US
officials claim the China’s main fear is a collapse of order in North
Korea, which would lead to a large-scale refugee flow into China.
Another
possible reason for China to worry is advanced by journalist James
Corbett, host of the Corbett Report, who believes that foreign military
presence in the region is just as unnerving to China as it is to
Pyongyang. He discussed this in the light of the latest war drills.
“I
think that this has the possibility of ratcheting things up to the
point where tensions might actually spill over as a result of this, and
we saw that recently with the deployment of B-2 nuclear armed bombers in
South Korea which is not only, I think, worrying to Pyongyang, but also
to China, to have nuclear bombers that close to the peninsula there, on
China’s southern border. I think that China wouldn’t be pleased with
that either, so this is quite an escalation that’s taking place.”
Others
believe openly that the US strategy is geared not towards the
destabilization of North Korea, but that of China. Li Jie, an expert
with a Chinese navy research institution, has told Reuters that “the
ultimate strategic aim is to contain and blockade China, to distract
China's attention and slow its development. What the US is most worried
about is the further development of China's economy and military
strength."
Retired Major General Luo Yuan, who is one of China’s
foremost military authorities, believes, however that "once the joint
US-South Korean exercises have finished and with birthday celebrations
for (late founder of North Korea) Kim Il-sung imminent, the temperature
will gradually cool and get back to the status quo of no war, no
unification."
While it has been urging calm and peace in the
region, Beijing has been very obliging at the UN Security Council, when
it helped push through the latest round of sanctions against North Korea
in March, following its third nuclear test the previous month. Despite
being Pyongyang’s greatest ally in the region, some experts believe this
is a sign of Beijing’s growing impatience. American diplomat
Christopher R. Hill, who helped under the Bush administration to
negotiate a deal for the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear facilities
(which didn’t last), says that the Chinese strategy is“not about the
words, it is about the music.”
The resolution came hours after
North Korea, angered at both the US-South Korean war games, and at the
proposed UN plan, threatened pre-emptive nuclear action against the
South and US military bases in the region.
This latest standoff
between North and South Korea and the US is credited to have started on
February 12, when Pyongyang supposedly performed its latest underground
nuclear weapons test. Just this weekend, North Korea vowed to boost its
nuclear arsenal, calling it a “treasure of a reunified country” which it
would never trade for anything, even “billions of dollars” worth of
aid.
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