Gordon G. Chang's Blog, page 17

China Courts South Korea

On Sunday, China’s Xi Jinping and South Korea’s Park Geun-hye met on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, their fourth meeting in less than ten months.

The two leaders discussed cooperative projects they have been working on since last year, including a memorial hall in China to honor Ahn Jung-geun, a Korean independence fighter known for his 1909 assassination of Hirobumi Ito, when he was Japan’s first governor general of Korea. Xi also said his country would dedicate a stone marker honoring Korean independence fighters. Park, for her part, said Seoul would repatriate 400 sets of remains of Chinese soldiers from the Korean War.

The Chinese and the Koreans now find themselves in tenuous agreement in some areas, united by an enmity toward Japan that’s far stronger than the memory of the 1950s war in which Mao Zedong’s China supported North Korea’s attempt to conquer the Republic of Korea. Yet on the important issues of today, Beijing and Seoul remain far apart. As a result, it is doubtful that China will ultimately pull South Korea into its orbit.

It appears, for instance, there was no agreement at Sunday’s meeting on the substantive issues relating to the “denuclearization” of Pyongyang. Moreover, it’s unlikely Park obtained Beijing’s promise to allow the referral to the International Criminal Court of a UN report on North Korea’s horrific human rights violations. China, a permanent member of the Security Council, has signaled its intention to veto or otherwise prevent the referral.

In trying to tempt Seoul away from Washington, however, Beijing is not empty-handed. South Korea, more than most other countries in the region, is trying to develop a strong relationship with China. Most notably, Park chose Beijing as the destination for her second foreign trip as president, breaking tradition by traveling there before Tokyo. Moreover, China is South Korea’s largest trading partner, and the two nations look like they will sign a free-trade deal in the coming months, further cementing ties.

Park’s “G-2” strategy, which seeks to maintain good relations with both Washington and Beijing, bears some resemblance to the approach of one of her predecessors, Roh Moo-hyun, the occupant of the Blue House from 2003 to 2008. Roh sought to distance his country from ally Washington, steering an independent path that delighted Beijing. South Korea, Roh said, should play a “balancing role,” switching sides on an issue-by-issue basis between the “northern alliance” of Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang and the “southern alliance” of Washington and Tokyo.

Roh’s approach didn’t work, and his two successors—Lee Myung-bak and Park—have now moved their country closer to the US.  Chinese policymakers, if they want Seoul to move into their fold, will need to make two fundamental shifts. First, they will have to end their country’s special relationship with the horrible Kim regime in Pyongyang. Although Beijing’s perceived influence over Kim gives South Korean leaders incentives to cooperate with their Chinese counterparts, it also tars China. This was especially evident in 2010 when Beijing stood firmly behind North Korea after it killed 50 South Koreans in two incidents.

Second, the Chinese will have to abandon their territorial ambitions on South Korea. The flashpoint is Socotra Rock, a formation about 15 feet below low tide in the Yellow Sea. The South Koreans, who call it Ieodo, have built a research station over it and claim it is within their exclusive economic zone. The Chinese also claim the formation, undeterred by the fact that the rock lies 80 nautical miles from South Korea’s Marado Island and almost twice that distance from the nearest territory belonging to the People’s Republic of China.

It looks like the Chinese are wedded to their policies and will not be able change them to accommodate South Korea. Beijing has bitterly complained about Seoul’s pro-US drift since the Roh years, but it maintains policies Seoul abhors. Chinese policymakers, therefore, have no one to blame but themselves.

 

Photo Credit: KOREA.NET

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Michelle Obama’s ‘Non-Political’ Trip to China

With her mother and two daughters, Michelle Obama will travel to Beijing and two other Chinese cities beginning Wednesday. It will be just her third solo trip outside the US. Even before she leaves Washington, the first lady is being criticized for going easy on China’s Communist Party, but in surprising ways her visit could be just what America needs to deal with an unfriendly Chinese leadership.

During her week in China, Obama will focus almost exclusively on one of her primary interests. “I make it a priority to talk to young people about the power of education to help them achieve their aspirations,” she said this month. “That message of cultural exchange is the focus of all of my international travel.”  This emphasis will, to the greatest extent possible, allow her to avoid the troublesome issues now plaguing Sino-US ties. As the Washington Post noted, “Obama’s effort to avoid controversy will be particularly pronounced.”

The first lady’s hosts, for their part, will oblige. As Bonnie Glaser of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies told the Post, “The Chinese will be quite eager to keep any political comments or anything that would reflect negatively on their political system off the table.”

Yet the visit is intensely controversial. As an initial matter, the trip is unpopular in some quarters of China. There are more than a few Chinese citizens—and undoubtedly some Beijing officials—who believe the first lady snubbed their country when she did not show up at the “shirtsleeves summit” in Southern California last June, when her husband hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan. Online commentary in the last few days has been acidic.  

Second, Obama is the guest of her counterpart, Peng, and that by itself raises the temperature. Peng, an honorary major general in the People’s Liberation Army, sang to the troops in Tiananmen Square soon after they had just run over, gunned down, and otherwise killed at least hundreds of Chinese citizens in June 1989. Some will think Obama meeting with Peng, just weeks away from the 25thanniversary of the massacre, is wrong in itself.

Third, it does not help that Obama, married as she is to the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, will not be visiting one of her other Chinese counterparts, Liu Xia. Liu was put under house arrest upon the announcement that her husband, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the 2010 Peace Prize. She is in failing health, her serious conditions aggravated by confinement and denial of medical treatment. Obama’s failure to try to meet Liu, who was hospitalized last month, is already drawing commentary in America and may attract attention to her husband’s apparent lack of interest in the fate of his fellow laureate.

And that brings us to the fourth reason why the first lady’s trip is now attracting criticism. Obama has not continued the much-admired activism of her two immediate predecessors, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, who in their various ways campaigned for high-profile causes. Bush, for instance, traveled to 67 countries to talk about human rights and health during one four-year stretch of her husband’s presidency.

Yet campaigners come in all styles. Even Obama’s focus on education, largely anodyne to Americans, will raise critical issues in China, where schooling is often as much about indoctrination as instruction. So in her own way she will be carrying the flag for values that are antithetical to those of the Communist Party. As a “senior administration official” told the Washington Post, Obama will discuss “the strength of our system contrasted with those of the Chinese.” And as she wrote in an official blog post about the trip, “I’ll be talking with students about their lives in China and telling them about America and the values and traditions we hold dear.”

Even the fact that she will show up with her mother and daughters—three generations of women under the same roof—will be remarkable to the Chinese people, whose ancient household structure has been obliterated by successive waves of communism and modernity. And the fact that Michelle Obama skipped the June summit? Some Chinese may come to realize that she in fact did so for the sake of her daughters, and this should ultimately play well in a country where family values are making a comeback after Mao Zedong attempted to eliminate them. “She can just be who she is, and it’s a win,” said Dan Blumenthal of the American Enterprise Institute. 

Americans can win in China by just being themselves. Perhaps the most enduring image of now former American Ambassador Gary Locke in the minds of the Chinese people was the August 2011 photograph of him carrying his own backpack while using a discount card to order a coffee at the Seattle airport, on his way to China to take up his post. The picture highlighted for many Chinese the down-to-earth American style, a contrast to the extravagance and corruption of their own officials, both high and low.

Similarly, the Chinese people will undoubtedly see the goodness and strength of America when the first lady, with mom and kids in tow, arrives in the Chinese capital.

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Replace Failed Diplomacy with Sanctions on North Korea

“Some dialogue is better than none, and better early than late,” said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at his press conference on Saturday in Beijing, talking about China’s hopes for denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

These remarks seem to be directed against the US for not wanting to resume the long-stalled six-party talks. Beijing has been trying to jumpstart the discussions, begun in August 2003, after North Korea abandoned them in April 2009. Russia, Japan, and South Korea are participants along with China, North Korea, and the US.

The Obama administration had tried hard to come to terms with Kim Jong Un, who took over as leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on the death of his father in December 2011. In early 2012, Washington had even reached an interim arrangement, termed the Leap Day Deal because it was announced on February 29th. In return for 240,000 tons of food aid, the North promised to stop work on a uranium-enrichment facility in Yongbyon, suspend nuclear and missile tests, and permit International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors back into the country.

“The deal is no permanent solution,” wrote Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies moments after the agreement was announced. Unfortunately, he was more right than he could have known at the time. The arrangement, incredibly, did not survive the following April. Kim fired off what looked like a ballistic missile that month—his regime instead claimed its Unha-3 “rocket” was carrying a satellite—and recriminations left relations worse than at the beginning of that year. North Korea, unfortunately, was not ready to deal with the international community in good faith. In all probability, it has no intentions to do so now.

On one level, this has not bothered Beijing. As Wang Yi’s comments indicate, China has never given up trying to put the six-party talks back on track. It is not entirely clear, however, what the Chinese think discussions with Kim can accomplish at this moment. And Washington, for its part, has played along, regularly sending envoys to Beijing and Seoul and exploring avenues for achieving progress.

Yet the diplomacy of both Beijing and Washington seems half-hearted, a sign that both sides know they need new approaches. From the American perspective, neither direct contact with the Kim regime nor working through the Chinese has been productive, either during this administration or the preceding one.

The White House, fearful of failure, does not now look like it will try another diplomatic push, and given current challenges in Ukraine and elsewhere, may not have the time to devote to the Korean peninsula in any event.

So what can be done at this time? In an obvious policy vacuum, the more conservative elements in Washington are thinking of bolstering the sanctions regime. The Heritage Foundation’s Bruce Klingner recently pointed out the vulnerabilities of Kim’s state to coercive measures, so this looks like a particularly good time for Congress to take up the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act of 2013, introduced last April by Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The Royce bill, which now has 133 cosponsors, tightens sanctions across the board and perhaps most importantly, pushes the US Treasury to declare North Korea a “primary money laundering concern,” further isolating Kim and his allies from the international financial system.

Beijing, for more than a decade, has tried to convince Washington that the North reciprocates friendly gestures. As a result, the administration of George W. Bush returned frozen funds to Pyongyang in June 2007 and removed Kim’s odious government from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism in October 2008. The North Koreans, however, pocketed both concessions and soon withdrew from the six-party talks. Moreover, in 2012 they tried to grab aid and, despite their promise not to do so, still tested their long-range launcher.

Foreign Minister Wang, who talks about the need to disarm Pyongyang, has gotten matters backward when he promotes dialogue. To achieve denuclearization, he should first be giving Kim Jong Un an incentive to talk. Beijing, therefore, should be restricting trade, aid, investment, and tourism.

Wang, after all, should “learn from history,” as his government is so fond of telling others. If denuclearization has really been its goal, Beijing’s friendly approach to North Korea over the course of years has been a complete failure.

And so has ours. Now is the time for Washington to reverse course and tighten sanctions. Nothing else, unfortunately, has worked.

Sometimes, no dialogue is better than some, and late is preferable to early.

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Beijing–Hong Kong Tensions Rise After Stabbing

A senior Chinese official took to the airwaves in Hong Kong on Thursday to condemn the brutal stabbing attack on Kevin Lau, the former editor of Ming Pao, a local newspaper, who had been abruptly dismissed from his job in January. “We’re closely watching the attack … and strongly condemn the unlawful act of the criminals,” said Yang Jian, deputy director of China’s Liaison Office in the city. “We firmly support the Hong Kong government to spare no effort, arrest the culprits, and punish them in line with the law.”

The statement will do little to lessen the damage to Beijing’s reputation in Hong Kong, which has been a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic since 1997. Many in the city suspect that Mainland Chinese individuals or pro-Beijing thugs staged the near-fatal attack on Lau, who sponsored, among other things, exposés on the “hidden” wealth of Chinese leaders.

Last Wednesday, one man, with the help of a getaway driver, slashed Lau in the back, one lung, and both legs with a meat cleaver and left him for dead. Lau was admitted to hospital in critical condition, but now it appears he will survive.

Lau was not the only liberal journalist to be targeted in recent years. In 2008, police thwarted an attempt to kill Jimmy Lai, who often antagonized Beijing with the hard-hitting reporting of his publications, and there has been a string of attacks on others. Rarely are assailants apprehended.

“Who let the thugs out in Hong Kong politics?” asked Stephen Vines, a local journalist, last August. In the last several years thuggish elements have run loose in Hong Kong, often while police passively watch them attack pro-democracy protesters. Many times, the Hong Kong government has failed to take effective action against these violent individuals.

There is a perception, therefore, that senior officials are reluctant to take action against those believed to be doing Beijing’s bidding. These concerns were highlighted when Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong’s top political official, spent more time criticizing a primary school teacher for cussing at a rally last July than dealing with her underlying grievance about the police’s lenient treatment of thugs harassing protesters.

As concerns about China’s meddling in Hong Kong grow, more people are taking to the streets to express discontent, sometimes over seemingly minor issues such as the failure last October to issue a free-to-air broadcast license to a start-up station. At the moment, the Hong Kong government is dreading what could end up as large-scale protests, organized by the Occupy Central, scheduled for this July. The group promises to shut down the heart of the city’s business district with “love and peace”—along with civil disobedience—if Beijing reneges on its pledge to allow universal suffrage in the 2017 elections for chief executive.

The prospect of mass action is creating angst in many quarters, especially the business community. The challenge for the Hong Kong government will be to keep gangsters from turning a peaceful protest—even one that is illegal—into a riot, with bloodshed. It’s not clear that the city’s pro-Beijing political leadership has the skill—or even the will—to do that. 

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Are Chinese–North Korean Ties Starting to Fray?

The special relationship of China and North Korea has stood for more than a half century, and they are now each others’ only formal military ally, but contacts between Beijing and Pyongyang appear now to be conducted at a lower level than during the time of Kim Jong Il, the ruler who died December 2011, and the contacts during his rule were lower than those at the time of his father, Kim Il Sung. During Kim Il Sung’s reign, diplomacy with China was conducted on a personal basis with Mao Zedong. These days it would appear that the Chinese might be having trouble keeping track of their only formal ally.

Beijing was clearly unnerved by the December execution of Jang Song Thaek, who was at the time considered the No. 2 official in Pyongyang. Jang, the uncle of ruler Kim Jong Un, may have been “a traitor to the nation for all ages,” as the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) called him, but he was China’s most influential contact in North Korea’s ruling circles. The Chinese leadership looks like it had no warning of Jang’s arrest or execution.

And the Kim regime appears to be downgrading relations with its primary benefactor. KCNA branded Jang’s business dealings with the Chinese as “crimes,” and it is almost certain that the state news agency was referring to the Chinese when it used the word “enemies” in its indictment of Jang. As Cai Jian of Fudan University told the South China Morning Post, there is a concern in Beijing that the North Koreans now do not place a high value on their ties with China.

Is China on the verge of a long-awaited shift in policy toward the North? Deputy Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin has just returned from a four-day visit to Pyongyang, and his mission comes on the heels of a delegation headed by another Foreign Ministry official, Xing Haiming, who traveled there in late January. Until now, the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party, rather than the Foreign Ministry, had been primarily responsible for dealing with the successive Kim regimes. “Communications with the International Department usually stresses more on the relationship between the ruling parties … and that usually conveys a sense that the two are brothers or allies,” said Cai. “With the involvement of the foreign ministry, it is more like nation-to-nation routine exchanges, stressing less on brotherly ties.”

Since as early as the era of Hu Jintao, the predecessor to current ruler Xi Jinping, Beijing has been trying to make this shift away from party-to-party ties, but the North Koreans have been resisting the change. The recent Foreign Ministry trips could signal Beijing’s determination to place diplomats, rather than party officials, at the center of Beijing-Pyongyang discussions.

Paradoxically, as the Chinese struggle with their North Korean relations, Washington is leaning on Beijing to use its influence to disarm Pyongyang. North Korea was the second-highest priority topic during Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Beijing this month, and there was no progress with the Chinese on this issue. At his “Solo Press Availability”—it was not a good sign that there was no joint press conference—Kerry did say that China “could not have more forcefully reiterated its commitment” to denuclearization, but then could not outline any specific steps it had agreed to take. All he could do was say Washington would consider Beijing’s proposals and Beijing would consider America’s.

Since about 2003, the beginning of the six-party denuclearization talks in Beijing, there has been an expectation in Washington that China would use its influence to push the North in better directions. That, for the most part, has not happened. Now, America’s general strategy seems even less promising, especially if Pyongyang and Beijing are pulling further apart.

At one time, it may have made sense to rely on Beijing to cajole the Kims, but now, especially after the Jang’s execution, it looks as if the Chinese may have no more influence in Pyongyang than we have. With China on the outs in the North’s ruling circles, we should be thinking about what we can do on our own.

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Japan’s Gigantic Stockpile of Plutonium

On Monday, Beijing said it was “extremely concerned” that Japan had resisted returning more than 300 kilograms of plutonium, most of it weapons-grade, to the United States. The material, purchased from America in the 1960s for research purposes, is enough to make 50 nuclear weapons.

Some think Tokyo will agree to hand back the fissile material in March, at the Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague. Even if it does so, the loss will hardly put a dent in its stockpile: the Japanese possess 44 tons of plutonium. Three-quarters of this fissile material is stored in other countries, but Japan has kept 10 tons on its own soil. Those 10 tons are enough to build about 1,500 nuclear weapons. 

Japan has more plutonium than any other state that does not have an arsenal of nukes. How did it acquire so much of the world’s most dangerous element? It is the only non-nuke arsenal state that reprocesses plutonium. It reprocesses the material for fuel for its reactors, but the country has shut down all its nuclear power plants in the aftermath of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, Japan’s Chernobyl. So Japan, at least at this moment, has virtually no power-generation need for its gigantic store of plutonium.

This anomalous situation has led its neighbors, and not only China, to question the size of its hoard. Even the US, its ally, is concerned. Steve Fetter says that Japan’s neighbors think the plutonium is “a type of nuclear deterrent—a signal that Japan could quickly build large numbers of nuclear weapons if it chose to do so.” 

Fetter, a former Obama White House official, is right about that. But he gets things backwards when he adds: “If other countries perceive a growing Japanese plutonium stockpile as a latent nuclear weapon capability, this will contribute to instability in East Asia.”

East Asia is already unstable, and countries are now trying to defend themselves. Tokyo is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and as such has promised not to build or possess atomic bombs and warheads. But by maintaining such a large stock of plutonium, the Japanese government appears to be signaling that it has the option to build nukes, should it deem them necessary.

President Obama wants to rid the world of these weapons—and he deserves credit for trying to do so—but his weak policies are actually encouraging their proliferation. China has been transferring nuclear technology since the 1970s, first to the Pakistanis and, through them, to the North Koreans and the Iranians. It has continually violated its obligations under the NPT, as the worldwide anti-proliferation pact is known, to not disseminate nuclear weapons technology and materials.

Like his predecessors, Obama has done little to curtail China’s proliferation. Now, nations like Japan are taking matters into their own hands. If the president wants to convince Tokyo to surrender its plutonium, he needs to first implement effective measures that deal with Chinese proliferation. Until then, we can expect East Asians to quietly develop their own nuclear deterrent capacities.

“Japan has avoided returning the material which caused international concern,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying. “China is deeply concerned and is expecting an explanation.”

The explanation, Ms. Hua, is that your country is destabilizing the region by its aggressive territorial claims and destabilizing the world by putting nukes into the hands of rogues. The Japanese are merely trying to defend themselves.

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Putin, East Asia’s New Power Broker

Russian President Vladimir Putin had a busy few days of diplomacy in Sochi as the Winter Olympics opened there last week, meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Saturday. Analysts say that, by scheduling the meetings as he did, Putin was using the occasion to expand his influence in East Asia.

Up until now, the dour Russian leader has shown little interest in that part of the world, preferring to devote himself to the “near abroad,” his country’s western border, and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Yet an increasingly nasty struggle embroiling China and Japan has given Putin an opening in East Asia—and leverage. Says Liang Yunxiang of Peking University, “Both countries attach great importance to their relationship with Russia as they hope he will play an active role in regional security and they want his support amid the dispute over the uninhabited islands.”

The “uninhabited islands” are more like barren outcroppings, eight of them to be precise. The Japanese now control what they call the Senkakus in the East China Sea. The Chinese, who call them the Diaoyus, want them as well. So it should be no surprise that both Xi and Abe showed up at the now-famous Black Sea resort in recent days to woo the leader of the Russian Federation.

Abe’s Japan and Putin’s Russia are still technically in a state of war, having never settled the fate of three islands and a set of rocks in the Kuril chain, seized by the Soviet Union in August and September 1945. For decades, neither Tokyo nor Moscow was willing to give an inch, literally or figuratively. Now, some believe Abe, a nationalist, is ready to deal. Negotiations over the islands, the Japanese prime minister said on Saturday, have been “very fast.” Putin will visit Japan in the fall.

Not long ago, it was almost inconceivable that Japan and Russia could sign a peace treaty to officially end their World War II belligerence and begin talks on commercial pacts. Now, the impossible may in fact be occurring.

Deal or no deal, the ongoing discussions between Putin and Abe show the resurgence of Russian diplomacy in the Far East. Two decades ago, there was little the Kremlin could do in East Asia. Beijing and Tokyo, after all, were close friends. The Japanese craved good relations with China, were deeply remorseful over historical transgressions, and materially supported the Chinese economy with aid, trade, and investment. Now, the Japanese are treating their giant neighbor as an enemy, and they are delinking their economy from it. Last year, for instance, trade volume between China and Japan dropped by 5.1 percent from the year before. That followed a 3.9 percent fall in 2012. Japanese direct investment in China slipped by 4.3 percent last year, and China’s direct investment in Japan plunged by 23.5 percent.

Ultimately, Putin will probably side with China, which has more to offer than the Japanese. But whatever happens in the future, the Beijing-Tokyo spat today gives Putin an opening to enter East Asia as its new power broker.

The world’s most opportunistic leader is not letting the moment slip by.

Photo Credit: Kremlin.ru

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Mao and Militarization at China's Spring Festival Gala

China Central Television’s Spring Festival Gala, which bills itself as “the most watched television event in the world,” was heavy on Cultural Revolution images this year. The show, a five-hour variety program airing the evening of January 30th, featured a performance of a portion of The Red Detachment of Women, one of the “eight model plays” endorsed by the notorious Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s wife and ringleader of the Gang of Four. The host of the event, Zhu Jun, appeared in Mao-like apparel to introduce the much-discussed segment.

There were other propagandistic elements to this year’s gala, such as the patriotic “My Chinese Dream,” a song reinforcing one of the major themes of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s rule. Organizers also included two revolutionary ballads. That there was propaganda in CCTV’s show is not news. It is noteworthy, however, that the state broadcaster reached back in such a heavy-handed way to Maoist times.

Why did Beijing authorities do so? The most obvious theory is that Xi wanted to placate the Communist Party’s “leftists,” especially because he had imprisoned Bo Xilai, who made a name for himself by promoting “Red” themes while governing the metropolis of Chongqing.

Qiao Mu of Beijing Foreign Studies University has raised another, more chilling, theory. “The arrangement of military elements throughout the show was political, and in line with the prevalent conservatism over the past year—to silence public discontent and to appease the army,” Qiao told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

Silencing public discontent is routine for the regime, but appeasing the army is not. The dominant narrative among foreign observers is that Xi, who became China’s supremo in November 2012, has quickly consolidated control over the People’s Liberation Army. Talk about trying to placate the top brass, however, does not fit easily with that storyline and suggests the party does not necessarily “control the gun,” to use a Maoist phrase popular among Beijing figures.

There is no clear answer whether Xi is the master of the military or whether the military is the master of Xi. In the murky—and complicated—elite politics of the party, we will not know for sure for some time. Yet, in the meantime, the images of stern-faced young women in Maoist military garb aiming rifles and thrusting swords are unsettling and suggest not all is well in the Chinese capital.

Do the Chinese people care about the evident revival of Maoism? It’s clear the Great Helmsman, as the first leader of the People’s Republic is known, has become a symbol of simpler, less corrupt times and, as a result, has gained popularity in recent years. People can feel nostalgia without endorsing Mao’s abhorrent political views or his disastrous policies, and some think that is in fact what is happening.

In the days after the gala, popular criticism has focused not so much on the inclusion of Cultural Revolution themes as the show’s lack of entertainment value. Among other things, the event lacked the humor evident in previous years. In a survey, 57.5 percent of respondents said they were “disappointed” in the gala this year.

Last year, about 750 million Chinese tuned into the CCTV show and another 209 million watched online. This year, the number of viewers was, in all probability, slightly smaller, as the show has steadily lost popularity. That is inevitable in a modernizing China, but Maoist images, especially to the younger segments of society, must seem hopelessly out-of-date. “The gala is a joyful occasion where people gather for celebrating,” said Qiao Mu. “These shows with such strong ideological colors simply do not fit in.”

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The Cycle of North Korean Provocations

North Korea is now telling the world that South Korea’s joint military exercises with the US might trigger an “unimaginable disaster.” This warning, delivered in New York on Friday by Pyongyang’s ambassador to the UN, looks like the beginning of the third stage in the North’s most recent campaign of provocations.

Analysts correctly see the Kim regime as unpredictable, but there are some observable patterns in its behavior, and this year it looks as if the North is following a classic one. In his New Year’s speech, young ruler Kim Jong Un expressed hope for better relations with South Korea. There was a catch, however. The offer, as it became clear, was conditioned on the South dropping its annual military exercises with the US. This was Stage 1, an apparently friendly gesture.

Stage 2 is the international community’s rejection of overtures. This year—like every year—Seoul turned down Kim’s calls to end the defensive drills. Kim, of course, knew the South Korean government could never accept something that would split its decades-old alliance with the US, the only guarantor of its security. Kim’s January 1st offer, therefore, was made so that it would be rejected.

Stage 3? That would be a series of threats, like the one on Friday, that North Korea uses to justify its Stage 4 actions.

Stage 4 is a series of provocations. There has been tunneling activity at the North’s nuclear test site, suggesting a fourth detonation is coming this spring, perhaps along with another ballistic missile launch. Pyongyang needs to demonstrate—to its customers in Iran and elsewhere—that its weapons and delivery systems work. Another potential hotspot is the West Sea, where clashes—some of them deadly—regularly occur. In 2010, for instance, 50 South Koreans died in two incidents, the sinking of the Cheonan in March and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November.

Finally, Stage 5 occurs when the regime ceases the provocations. Last year, North Korea suddenly wound down a crisis in May—after, among other things, abrogating the Korean War armistice, closing the Kaesong Industrial Complex, and threatening to incinerate Austin, Texas.

Months will then pass before the Kim regime starts the cycle again. Of course, in some years North Korea will rejigger the order of its scheme—last year, for instance, the North interrupted its stream of provocations by inviting Dennis Rodman to come to Pyongyang in February—but this framework generally describes how the North acts. There is, in short, a general progression of events where gestures of good will are followed by belligerent acts that in turn end without explanation.

Analysts will often wonder what causes North Korean bellicosity, the scariest stage in this well-programmed drama. The best answer is that the Kim family regime is by its nature hostile, that it is unable to maintain good relations with others, including allies. The repetition of the cycle indicates Pyongyang’s behavior is not a reaction to others; it is the product of something else, most likely the nature of the ruling regime itself.

This year, there is a concern that these internal politics could tear that ruling group apart. The demonization of the high-ranking Jang Song Thaek at the end of last year, followed by his swift execution, was almost certainly the result of military officers exacting revenge for Jang’s persecution of them while he was in power. With the current ascendance of the North’s generals and admirals, who appear to have more aggressive views than other regime elements, this year’s version of the staged cycle could be more terrifying than usual.

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Hanoi's Symbolic Pushback Against Chinese Expansionism

For the first time, Hanoi has formally marked the deaths of 74 South Vietnamese sailors killed in an attempt to dislodge Chinese forces occupying several of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. The Vietnamese government, many believe, is trying to stay ahead of public sentiment. On Sunday, the 40th anniversary of the sea battle, activists in Vietnam’s capital shouted anti-China slogans and laid flowers at the statue of Ly Thai To, a nationalist figure. Police allowed the unauthorized event to go on for about a half hour before dispersing the crowd.

Hanoi maintains that China is “illegally” occupying the islands, which sit about 200 nautical miles off Vietnam’s coast. Beijing, for its part, claims about 80 percent of the South China Sea with nine dashes on its official maps. Introduced in the 1940s, the dashes, nicknamed the Cow’s Tongue for the shape they form, indicate that Beijing believes those waters are internal. All other countries, including the US, disagree.

China’s expansive claim is inconsistent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which Beijing has ratified, and optimists long maintained that the Chinese would not enforce such a broad interpretation of the nine dashes. Now, it’s clear they are holding onto their maximalist position. As of the first of this month, regulations issued by the authorities in China’s Hainan Province require “foreigners and foreign fishing vessels entering sea areas administered by Hainan and engaged in fishery production or fishery resource surveys” to receive approval “from the relevant State Council department in charge.” In short, Beijing purports to exercise sovereignty over most of the South China Sea.

China’s claims have been backed up by methodical and aggressive seizures of disputed territories. Over the course of decades, Beijing has grabbed specks in the South China Sea—not just Drummond and Duncan Islands, the objects of the 1974 clash with South Vietnam, but also Johnson South Reef in the Spratlys in 1988. Most recently, the Chinese took Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines, in 2012. Emboldened by that success, they are now pressuring Manila on Second Thomas Shoal and other territory.

And we have been warned. China’s navy, according to a Chinese media report from this month, intends to seize what Beijing calls Zhongye. The island, one of the Spratlys, is better known as Pagasa because it is in fact inhabited and controlled by the Philippines. The navy says the battle “will be restricted within the South China Sea,” as if that body of water is China’s to use as it pleases.

It is unlikely that China will actually invade Pagasa, part of the Philippines, but belligerent sentiments are often expressed in Chinese military circles these days. It seems not a month passes when one of China’s officers does not publicly call on Beijing to invade some maritime neighbor, as General Liu Yazhou, the political commissar at the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University, did in a recent interview.

As China pushes beyond its recognized boundaries, countries on its periphery are resisting—and remembering. For years, Hanoi sought to suppress nationalist sentiment, embarrassed that the communist government, having been dependent on Beijing’s massive aid at the time, did not oppose China’s moves in 1974.

Now, Hanoi cannot prevent its citizens from speaking out. “After a long time, the deaths of my husband and others seemed to fall into oblivion, but I’m very glad that they have been mentioned,” said Huynh Thi Sinh, widow of the captain of a Vietnamese vessel fighting the Chinese during the 1974 incident, to online publication VietNamNet. “Maybe in his world he’s feeling satisfied. His sacrifice is very meaningful. I’m proud.”

Her husband died fighting the Chinese, and she is not about to remain silent if her government cedes territory to them. As time passes, the battles of decades ago in Asia become more vivid.

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