China’s Troublesome Neighbors
A woman sits on a bench looking into North Korea from the province of Jilin in northeast China on Feb. 29.Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images
This week, China and India announced a deal to reduce tensions and resume mutual patrols along their disputed border in Ladakh—so far with few details. This is welcome news in Beijing, but lately, its most troublesome neighbors have been its supposed friends: North Korea and Myanmar are both causing head-scratching and even anger among Chinese officials.
China has not offered formal comment on the recent reports suggesting that North Korean troops are headed to Ukraine to fight on Russia’s behalf, but it is causing real concern in Beijing. China has sought to simultaneously offer rhetorical—and to a degree, material—support to Russia while not wrecking its ties with the West. North Korea’s actions certainly cross that line.
North Korea is China’s only treaty ally, with a mutual defense agreement that dates to 1961; it is also nominally an ideological partner. But tensions have long marked the Beijing-Pyongyang relationship. North Koreans resent China positioning itself as a communist big brother to the smaller nation—in much the same way that the Chinese came to resent the Soviet Union.
Behind closed doors, North Korean leaders sometimes trot out the line that Japan is a “century-old enemy,” while China is a “thousand-year-old enemy,” referring to China’s historical imperialism in the Korean Peninsula. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has reportedly used a similar phrase himself.
In China, North Korea has become a byword for totalitarian repression—so much so that some young Chinese use the term “West Korea” to criticize the political leadership’s swing toward greater authoritarianism. Chinese analysts and officials often privately criticize North Korea’s failure to follow China’s 1980s path of “reform and opening,” depicting Pyongyang as intransigent and paranoid.
The Ukraine news also comes as Chinese experts express worry about growing aggression from North Korea against South Korea. Part of that concern is that Pyongyang can now use Moscow’s need for allies to play the Kremlin against Beijing—reducing China’s already limited leverage over North Korea.
Meanwhile, a bombing attack in Myanmar last week targeting the Chinese consulate in Mandalay—which damaged the building but caused no fatalities—still doesn’t have a clear culprit. China has called for an investigation and lodged “serious representations” with Myanmar’s ruling military junta, which took power in a 2021 coup.
The attack will stir further concerns in Beijing that the military leadership is unreliable—and possibly losing the country’s civil war. China has close ties to Myanmar’s generals, greased by mutual corruption among both militaries. Beijing initially hoped that the coup would allow Chinese-funded megaprojects in Myanmar to move forward. But it turns out that war is bad for infrastructure, and there has been little progress on any of the Chinese investments.
China is also irate about the military regime’s failure to protect Chinese property and citizens—and especially about criminal groups kidnapping Chinese workers for cyber scams. As a result, Beijing is building greater ties with ethnic militias and other anti-government armed forces in Myanmar, building on existing agreements (and private deals) between the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and these militias.
China’s biggest concern is along its border with Myanmar, where it has tried unsuccessfully but sincerely to broker a peace that would both prevent violence from spilling over and allow for trade to reopen. Rebel forces in Myanmar have made considerable gains along the frontier, including seizing a border post this week.
As with North Korea, China’s preference in Myanmar would be for all involved to stop yelling and at least pretend to get along. But that is not happening, Beijing is discovering that even superpowers can’t just make things go the way that they want on the ground.