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Best Korea and Dear Leader's Howitzers
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What they would hate more is a unified, US allied Korea. And as long as that's true, reunification won't happen. Consider all the concessions and backroom dealing with France and Great Britain it took to allow for German reunification.
Am I wrong?
No this tallies with everything I've heard. China doesn't give a fuck about North Korea, they just don't want it getting back to them.
2 trillion over 30 years really isn't that bad if it were in the form of historical reconstruction loans (like, 60+ year repayment arrangements)
I assume that they also don't want to share a border with (South) Koreans. North Koreans are better, they're too busy being refugees to smuggle things or be disruptive.
Again: living conditions don't have to be on-par with SK overnight or even by the end of the decade. You won't have an open border at the outset, anyway, to avoid a refugee crisis boiling over into neighboring countries.
The real deal-breaker, as always, would be a lasting insurgency. But I can't see the motivation for that, since there isn't a cohesive, regional interest in agitating the situation like you have in Iraq, unless China really starts to get nervous.
You may be ignoring the fact that the shared border leaves China with a potential refugee crisis in the making. The DMZ is, by design, practically impassible--even the breaches by the North require military operation. The Chinese border is guarded, but isn't the world's largest minefield or the like. Plus, there's the whole "still at war with South Korea", which I'm guessing North Koreans are mindful of and might, at some point, factor into their decision making process.
Anything that causes a collapse of the North Korean power structure is going to cause a huge headache for China when millions stream towards their border seeking refuge. That is something they absolutely want to avoid--they don't need an additional 10 or 20 million people in their country, from any part of Korea, much less suffering from rabid undernourishment--and why they tolerate North Korean behavior. Handling that crisis, all the while with the G8 and East Asia screaming at them to do a better job, because there will be screw ups, is not going to be cheap--China is a larger economy than South Korea, but it's not swimming in money, and a huge refugee crisis would be a lot more difficult than a gradual re-management of the country and supplying of aid.
The thought of a US/South Korean-puppet government in the North probably doesn't make the Chinese terribly happy, but I'll bet they'd prefer it to millions of North Koreans trying to cross over the border--potentially with the military hardware of the most militarized nation on Earth. Assuming that new government succeeds in keeping the border closed.
I'm not worried about North Korea using nukes so much as I'm worried about a desperately cash strapped country raising money by selling them to terrorist groups.
My estimation may be way off, but isn't China still largely impoverished? And carries a population of something like 1.5 billion?
Adding another dozen million to that number doesn't seem like the harshest pill to swallow.
Well, whether they could is one thing, I'm pretty sure they absolutely could, if they wanted to. Whether they would is another.
It just seems like a rather small figure to hem and haw about when it does the world so much good to be rid of North Korea.
It's like someone saying that you can save the world but it's going to cost you $250, and you're like, "Aw, man! 250 bucks? I was gonna buy a Playstation!"
What is more important to China right now:
A)Relations with the western nations that are buying all their produced goods and supporting a massively growing economy.
B)Relations with an old not-even-a-real ally from the early/mid 20th century that may still function as an important strategic buffer between said western nations.
Honestly. Who do you think China will pick to be friends with if shit hits the fan. Supporting NK for real would be the equivalent of committing mass economic suicide unless they were willing to start WW3.
It's not relations that China is thinking of. China would be more than happy if the entirety of North Korea suddenly disappeared in a brilliant fireball tomorrow. As has been stated many times in this thread, it's the massive refugee crisis that China doesn't want. Something on that level would hit their economy hard and slow the growth they've had the past few years.
We might have to just accept the fact that North Korea is here to stay- that we won't be able to topple the Kim regime either now or anytime soon, unless we're willing to accept all the casualties that would cause. It seems like the people of South Korea just don't want to go through another war any time soon.
I'm actually not terribly worried North Korea selling nukes to terrorist groups. Although the country is cash strapped, the military and elite have all the money they need, which is all that matters from their point of view. They probably want to keep all the nukes they can get their hands on.
Precisely this.
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
it would probably be more accurate to say that, if western nations get annoyed enough at china, we'll devalue our currency and buy LESS of their goods, which will stop being quite so cheap.
I find this unlikely
Yeah no.
They would probably bitch about it extensively though.
It's unlikely, but I don't think it's completely impossible. They've certainly said on numberous occasions that they will defend North Korea against agression, and there's a long historical precedent of China defending Korea against invasions. They don't want a US puppet state on their border, either. I'd say it depends on the circumstances of what happens- if North Korea randomly attacks across the DMZ of course they won't support that, but if the USA unilaterally attacked North Korea then that would greatly disturb China. I could see them sending weapons and aid, if not actual troops, in that situation.
I have like no idea where this comes from. Is a certain portion of the population of United States simply incapable of surviving without a Cold War? That they need a pseudo-Soviet Union to gaze harshly across the Atlantic?
No, it's completely, absolutely, 100% impossible.
The long historical precendent doesn't mean anything. The co-operation treaty will be scrapped if North Korea gets in a war.
China has literally no political, ideological or any other reason where entering a war at the side of North Korea would be a good option.
Again, I'm not so sure that's true. China has a population of 1.33 billion, almost all of which live below the poverty line. North Korea has a population of 23 million, which is less than 2% of China's entire population.
Let's put it this way. As a percentage, there are three times as many illegal aliens currently estimated living in the US there would be if the *entire* nation of North Korea flooded into China.
I think China would be okay.
Oh ok, if you say so then it must be 100% certain. I'm sure they won't mind then if the US were to engage in a war of conquest up the peninsula.
When you make a claim like "100% impossible" you need to back it up a little more.
I'm sure there would be a diplomatic backlash and all that.
If NK started it, I doubt they would risk war with the US for NK.
If the US/SK started it, I would put very high odds at them joining in to kick our asses out.
China does feed them. They subsidize the entire country with food, fuel, medicine, etc. They keep the country on an IV drip because occasionally NK does something that makes China frown. They withhold fuel for three days and suddenly North Korea is listening quite attentively. Despite China subsidizing the country they supply NK with very little in terms of weapons and ammunition. While NK may claim they can have 10 million boots on the ground I promise you they do not have nearly enough bullets for all of those 10 million. NK's "army" does very little training due to a lack of fuel and ammo.
China wants to keep a communist voice on their border. If you look at a map china is completely encircled by democratic countries though most of them do not have strong if any US ties. Pakistan and Afghanistan have US ties but they aren't really applicable in the same sense as South Korea. China does not want a US-backed unified Korean peninsula at their doorstep. If NK's regime was to suddenly fall or change you can bet that China has Koreans in place ready to re-establish rule.
China wants North Korea to stay North Korea regardless of which shmuck is running the show. As long as there is a separation between North and South and as long as North is communist China will continue to subsidize the country and play tit-for-tat between US and NK while quietly hedging their bets.
The odds are exactly zero.
They would be very pissed, but they wouldn't do anything beyond diplomacy and financial strangeholds if they were really pissed. Korean War was sixty years ago. And even then China had to form a bullshit-volunteer league to seem like they weren't interfering, and this was under the height of Communist expansion, Communist ideology and the freaking Mao Zedong. Current financial, military and ideological politics are so different that it will never happen.
North Korea is nothing to China. They won't sacrifice a single soldier for them. They certainly wouldn't sacrifice their relations with the United States and their position and growth in the world economy.
Taiwan would be a different deal.
It wants that, but it is not willing to go to war over it. Because that war would just make things way worse.
And China literally doesn't give a flying fuck about Communism as an ideology, except inside their own borders, and that's pretty much overstating that as well when you look at it's economy.
And if you look at a map, China is surrounded by pretty much two true democracies. India and Mongolia. And well, I guess Bhutan now. Rest are pretend democracies or ones that don't even pretend to be ones. There are even two communist countries.
China, you need to make better friends.