China has served as North Korea’s economic lifeline with consistent oil supply and trade despite mounting international calls for it to further isolate and harshly punish its wayward ally for its purported hydrogen bomb test earlier this month.

Then, the question arises as to why Beijing is reluctant to cut off support, without which the communist regime in Pyongyang might be forced to renounce its nuclear ambitions, or possibly collapse.

Analysts say that despite its unruly behavior, Pyongyang is of great geostrategic value for Beijing as it still serves as a useful “buffer” that prevents U.S. forces stationed on the peninsula from moving closer to the areas bordering China.

“North Korea is still a crucial military buffer zone for China, particularly amid intensifying rivalry between the U.S. and China,” said Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University.”

“But for China, a major power charged with safeguarding the international order, norms and rules, Pyongyang’s aberrant and provocative behavior that ran afoul of international rules is obviously burdensome.”

Park Won-gon, security expert at Handong Global University, echoed Chang’s view, noting that as long as China pursues a hegemonic role in East Asia, China would try to capitalize on the North’s strategic value rather than abandon it.

“The biggest stumbling blocks to China’s quest of a preponderant leadership role in the region are the U.S. forces forward-deployed in South Korea and Japan. Especially, the U.S. forces in South Korea are the closest U.S. assets that can potentially be used to keep China in check,” he said.

“Thus, even after the unification of the peninsula, China may not want to lose the strategic asset of North Korea serving as a buffer.”

Aside from Pyongyang’s geopolitical value, China has also sought to ensure stability on its periphery as any instability along its borders would hamper its economic rise and its efforts to tackle a slew of domestic issues, including economic revitalization, social polarization, corruption and political reform, to name a few.
 

“China’s policy toward North Korea is part of its ‘peripheral’ diplomacy with neighboring states. Its peripheral diplomacy is centered on forging an external environment congenial to realizing the ‘China dream,’ or its rise as a major power,” said Lee Dong-ryul, China expert at Dongduk Women’s University.

“China has long sought to maintain stability on its periphery -- not just rhetorically but practically -- as instability would hamper its stable ascent as a major power.”

Lee added that Beijing could make a strategic judgment that instability in the North Korean regime would undermine its national interests more than the North’s possession of a small nuclear weapons inventory.

In the past, some observers argued that Pyongyang could also be a “strategic card” for Beijing in case Washington uses the issue of Taiwan’s independence to pressure Chinese authorities in any diplomatic or military clash.

But this scenario would no longer be valid given the close economic ties between China and Taiwan, analysts pointed out.

“Despite political tensions between China and Taiwan, the two are economically interconnected, (which makes it difficult for the U.S. to use the Taiwan card to challenge China),” said Yang Gab-yong, the head researcher of the Institute of China Studies at Sungkyunkwan University.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)