China and DPRK

Despite the public proclamations of friendship and solidarity, it is clear that relations between China and North Korea are not all well and rosy.

First is the state of secrecy surrounding their relations.

As David Shambaugh noted, although China’s North Korea watchers “no doubt know more about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea than any other country, they tend not to commit their views to print.” (China’s Communist Party Atrophy and Adaptation, Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 2008)

"A scouring of the literature reveals very little beyond superficial descriptions of North Korea and China-North Korea relations. Even studies by the CCP International Department, which has more extensive interactions with Pyongyang than any other organizations in China, contain no analysis of North Korea, although they do contain an interesting description of party-to-party exchanges between the two sides over half a century."

North Korea is also said to be a "proscribed" topic to write about, even in internal (neibu) publications. The only insights to be gleaned are a few analyses of North Korea's economic reform, which are said to have begun in 2001 with the establishment of some special economic zones and the acceptance of some foreign investment, the abolition of the ration system for certain controlled commodities, some price reform, and the permitting of some small-scale free markets.

Then there is the "disdain, despair and frustration" that China harbors for North Korea.

China often deplored "the sycophantic cult of personality surrounding the Kim dynasty" and is critical of North Korea's family political dynasty, the Stalinist state security, the command economy, the impoverishment of the population, the use of scarce resources for military purposes, the regime’s mass mobilization techniques, and its "autarkic paranoia" about the world beyond its borders.

Some China watchers even went so far as to draw explicit parallels to Maoist China particularly during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. They argued that North Korea's only viable option to "avoid national suicide" was to emulate China's reformist example.

To this end, the CCP International Department and other organs have brought a number North Korean delegations involving bureaucrats, managers, economists and officials to China to receive briefings and view China's economic reforms first hand.

Such a form of "economic reform diplomacy" has also involved North Korean leader Kim Jong Il who had made four such visits to China between 2000 and 2006. During the visits, he was taken to China's Silicon Valley in Zhongguancun, agricultural research institutes, the Shanghai skyline, the Three Gorges Dam, the bustling seaport of Yantian in Guangdong, the five-star White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, and the export-processing Zhuhai and Shenzhen Special Economic Zones.