Curious Case of South Korea: Part 3
Perhaps the People’s Republic is a house of cards waiting to crumble.
Half a billion people still live in abject poverty. Even before Covid-19, China had a huge number of loans (estimates are 15%) not being repaid. There is more debt held in murky “wealth management products” tied to real estate than held by banks. For too many companies, growth is high, but profits are low or losses are massive (and the books are being cooked. See Luckin Coffee).
Chinese invest whatever they can abroad; if China was a wonderful investment, its own people should be ploughing their money into it. That they put as much as they can into foreign assets like real estate tells you what they think of the Chinese prospectus.
China’s dream of One Belt, One Road may be the new silk road to riches — or a bottomless pit of financial ruin. How much of your money would you be willing to invest in Pakistan, Kyrgzstan or Putin’s kleptocratic Russia?
However, people have been saying China’s economy is about to crash and burn since the 2008 crisis. If it’s a sick man, it’s been yelling at the nurses from its death bed for a long time. And with 1.2 billion people, what China has in abundance is scale to fix mistakes.
Regardless, national security decision makers must prepare for the worst case scenario. So what is the worst case scenario for South Korea with China?
Let’s start with a (very) brief history lesson. China was the predominant economic and military power in East Asia until the nineteenth century. It granted or withheld trade privileges according to an elaborate system of tribute, in which other countries had to send diplomatic missions, bestow gifts, and kowtow to the Chinese emperor. The Chinese then determined the prices and quantities of all goods traded. You took their offer, or you took nothing.
As Americans believe their country is a “shining light on a hill,” Chinese believe a world with Beijing at the center of a new tribute system is the natural order of things. The education system in China explicitly teaches this. In our Foreign Policy primer, we discuss how history creates national expectations. Tribute from foreigners is China’s national expectation.
Or as China’s former Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi out it, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact.”
How will that play out?
Like the Emperors of old, China is already using its newfound economic clout to bend other countries to its will. It is intervening in other countries’ domestic politics to get friendlier policies. And governments. Above all, it is building up its military.
Why is China building its military?
According to Admiral Wu Shengli, former commander of the PLA Navy, “in China’s modern history, imperialist and colonists initiated more than 470 invasions of China, including 84 large ones, from the sea.”
The Chinese Communist Party claims it ended China’s Century of Humiliation when European Powers and Japan subjugated it while carving out pieces of territory and committing atrocities against the Chinese people. (The CCP’s role is a myth; as with Korea, the Japanese were the last foreigners in China and they left when the US nuked Nagasaki and Hiroshima). In a world without nuclear weapons that would be legit: China was conquered and it wants a robust defense.
But, it’s 2020 not 1820. China has weapons of mass destruction that would leave its enemies in ashes and any “victory” the definition of Pyrrhic.
Even so, exploring the conventional threats China faces provides perspective:
The United States: If the U.S. wanted to take advantage of a weak China, it would have listened to MacArthur during the Korean War or maybe taken a shot 35 years ago. The “elite” in the U.S has proved time and again they are dumb. Even they are not dumb enough to invade China. If your rules make it impossible to tame Iraq or Afghanistan, how could you manage one billion Chinese?
Russia: Putinism has proven little better than Tsarism or Leninism at harnessing Russia’s potential. The Soviet Union at its height could not have swallowed China. Putin’s Russia is a shell of the Soviet Union. China is far more a threat to Russia — or parts of it — than vice versa.
India: India’s military is vastly inferior to China’s and has been since both states re-came of age in the late 1940s. China’s GDP is almost 5 times bigger than India’s. India is a democracy that needs more butter than guns. The terrain of the Himalayas also makes sustained war unlikely. Though China might access India through its mercurial friend Pakistan, India does not have a similar pressure point on China. Bottom line: China is also a bigger threat to India than vice versa
Japan: brutally ruled China from 1931 to 1945. Has been rebuilding its military despite its pacifist constitution. It’s also in demographic decline and has less than one-tenth of China’s potential scale. Japan could mount a robust defense of itself against China. It’s not a genuine offensive threat.
China will not be invaded anytime soon. So, why has China built-up this vast military at the expense of building hospitals in Hangzhou?
China wants its empire back.
What is the purpose of an empire?
In security terms, it’s to push your borders as far as you possibly can to eliminate any threats to your heartland. That also puts pressure on any would be enemies to focus on defense rather than offense. Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.
Economically, it’s to carve out exclusive access to resources and markets. Demand drives up price.
Think about it this way. If you sell bananas, and I’m your only buyer, you will need to sell on my terms. If there’s another interested party (or two or three), now you can sell on your terms. China wants to be the only available buyer.
As under the tribute system, China can take the most lucrative opportunities for itself and leave the drudge work to the provinces. Designed in Shanghai, mined in Ulaan Bator.
China has a strategy for building an empire that would also make it the world’s dominate power. It’s outlined here in our primer on Mahan and Makinder.
Succinctly, Xi Jingping’s vision for One Belt, One Road is designed to secure first the resources of Central Asia to build an impenetrable economic empire and then use that to project sea power that would make all of Eurasia plus Africa China’s sphere of influence.
As pointed out above, we’ll see how that plays out. But closer to home, China is almost ready to dominate the region.
The implication of the graphic to the right is exactly what it appears: Chinese arms now dominate, albeit imperfectly, the East Asian strategic environment. It’s become their sphere of influence. The peace of the region, and the ability of other nations to trade and travel through it on equal terms, now hang on the margin of China’s fear that a major confrontation would trigger escalating armed conflict with American and allied forces before they are ready for it.
As Admiral Philip Davidson, the new INDO-PACOM commander, told Congress early this year, “China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States.”
What does this military build-up already mean for South Korea?
The PLA Navy has increased patrols near the Korean Peninsula.
Between January 2016 and February 2019, Chinese warships intruded into South Korea’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) 465 times. That’s 84 percent of total of incursions, meaning China is far more invasive than North Korea.
This naval activity is increasing. In 2016, there were 110 Chinese intrusions into South Korea’s EEZ, a figure that more than doubled to 243 in 2018.
Why is China doing this?
1) China has expanded reconnaissance activities of its own territories.
2) Beijing is testing the South Korean military’s posture and response.
3) China intends to try to claim effective control of waters near the Korean Peninsula, as it is doing though out East Asia.
Specifically, Seoul and Beijing have yet to define an EEZ in the waters near Socotra Rock in the Yellow Sea, which both countries lay claim to. South Korea has built a maritime research station and helipad there. Beijing’s attempt to apply military pressure on Seoul is a cause of great concern for South Koreans who worry that China could renew a jurisdictional claim to Socotra Rock.
The expansion of the PLA Navy Marine Corps, which began in April 2017, requires careful attention too. China’s Marine Corps is expected to be a 30,000-strong force by 2020. Previously, the Marine Corps were assigned only to the South Sea Fleet stationed in Zhanjiang in Guangdong Province — pointed at Taiwan.
Now Marine Corps units can now be found all along China’s eastern seaboard all the way to the north. South Korea has legitimate concerns about China’s increasing amphibious and expeditionary warfare capabilities in its north.
China wants to make the only American recourse in its neighborhood a war and very soon nuclear war. Would Americans risk destruction of New York for Taipei?
What are China’s priorities?
Taiwan. The CCP is committed to reabsorbing the “renegade province” into its fold. The reason why Taiwan must be as existential a trip-wire as West Berlin is success there would only encourage Chinese forays elsewhere.
Japan. This is anecdotal. But I went to a wedding in Beijing followed by a three-day honeymoon bus tour to Tienjian. At every stop our hosts gave me a little of the history, which very often centered around how the Japanese occupation had looted some aspect of the place. The Rape of Nanking is very fresh in the Chinese mind.
South Korea. Surprised? Look at a map.
Strategically, the Korean peninsula sits like a dagger pointed at Beijing, of which Beijing is obviously extremely aware. It’s why Mao sacrificed a million Chinese troops in the Korean War. It’s also why China will never abandon the unpleasant Kim regime in Pyongyang without a reliable alternative; North Korea is a 300 mile long tank trap.
South Korea poses other problems:
1) Democracy is unacceptable to authoritarians … any authoritarian. Because if the people show they can successfully choose who governs them, why shouldn’t they choose who governs them everywhere?
The Chinese Communist Party will undermine any democratic government anywhere near it. It’s a threat to their own survival. CCP propaganda always exploits the debate of any democracy to paint it through the prism of “chaos and disorder” for its own people.
2) South Korea’s current export oriented economy is competitor to China’s. Right now, it skims good opportunities. But if those modern South Korean factories were pumping out components that acted as inputs for higher value Chinese goods, that would serve the Chinese economic model. Think of Korea as China’s Mexico. Koreans would rather not.
Beijing wants a puppet regime running South Korea.
That could be the Kims, who would find a Beijing not worried about American troops in South Korea an even harder master than they do now.
In fact, given the Kims seem to be dedicated Marxists and economic mismanagers of historic proportions, I suspect they would quickly be disposed of for Koreans who enthusiastically embrace (and get personally enriched by) Chinese crony capitalism.
Farfetched?
“Elites” in Cambodia and Thailand are already cozying up to Beijing and diminishing democracy at the expense of their people to line their own pockets. The Soviet Union didn’t offer to make local elites billionaires. The People’s Republic of China does. That’s what makes it so dangerous.
If Koreans don’t want that kind of country, they have no greater national security concern than keeping Washington very close. And building very strong and powerful alliances in the same predicament like Japan. Anything else fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and its “China Dream.”
Beijing has already given South Korea a taste of the subservience it expects. In 2017, China punished the Japanese–South Korean business conglomerate Lotte for cooperating with the U.S.-built THAAD missile defense program. (Lotte had sold the land on which THAAD was deployed to the South Korean government.)
Beijing banned Chinese tour groups from visiting South Korea, Chinese regulators closed 80 percent of Lotte supermarkets and other Korean-owned businesses (ostensibly for fire-code violations), and state-run media urged boycotts of Korean products.
Just as it’s South Korea’s right to install the defense systems it wants, it’s China’s right to buy from whomever it wants.
But if you’re South Korean, it should occur to you China doesn’t want you to have a robust defense for a reason. As your neighbor, why would I get angry about the kind of security alarm you install unless I plan to rob you?
That’s because with strong American and Japanese support, South Korea is a near impossible nut for China to crack.
So, what gives China hope about South Korea?
South Koreans are ambivalent about their relationship with the U.S. and hate Japan.
We’ll explore that next.