Dangerous silence
Amid the flurry of statements out of China following North Korea's artillery strike on a South Korean island a week ago, it is useful to look at what Beijing is not saying. Beijing officials may urge peace, restraint and dialogue and talk of 'worrisome' developments, but some key details are missing.
For starters, Beijing has yet to directly link its fraternal and strategic allies in Pyongyang to last Tuesday's barrage. Nor, significantly, has it held Pyongyang accountable for the deaths of 46 South Korean sailors - many of them conscripted university students - when their warship Cheonan was torpedoed back in March. Remaining, in the words of Premier Wen Jiabao , 'impartial' in the matter, Beijing envoys to the United Nations played a key role in watering down a Security Council resolution on the sinking. Despite an international investigation confirming it was a North Korean torpedo, the resolution did not identify a culprit.
Looking at gaps in Beijing's response illuminates not just the worsening tensions on the Korean Peninsula, but the growing challenges ahead if they are ever to be significantly eased.
On Sunday, for example, China made its first concrete move of the crisis - proposing six-nation crisis talks next month. Yet South Korea, whose president yesterday described Tuesday's attack as a crime against humanity and is still seething over Beijing's subdued response to the Cheonan, is highly sceptical. And the US and Japan are showing solidarity with that caution.
Beijing's habitual unease with being publicly critical of its hermit neighbour goes far beyond just recent events, of course. It appears to be limiting the prospect of meaningful regional co-operation to solve the crisis in the long term.
Even, for example, when the failed six-nation process to rid North Korea of its nuclear programme was going well, Beijing was hardly effusive.
'Beijing officials worked hard as host of the talks to promote dialogue and draw North Korea into the process,' said one participant in the talks, which involved both Koreas and China as well as Japan, Russia and the US.
'But don't think [it] was all suddenly happy families ... they gave nothing away. Chinese officials have never really shared anything about Pyongyang's capabilities or its intentions. Once you get close to that fraternal relationship, the old cold war shutters come down.'
Even though a resumption of formal six-party talks beyond any initial crisis talks remains a core part of Beijing's recent diplomatic pronouncements, there is little appetite for a resumption in Tokyo and Washington. In Seoul, the issue is effectively a dead letter until the Cheonan sinking has been fully tackled.
And even if Beijing does somehow turn things around, there is a nagging contradiction in the internal logic of the talks: is Pyongyang really willing to give up its nuclear weapons? Certainly, history suggests that when countries have gone nuclear, they generally stay that way.
In recent years, there has been lots of high-minded talk of 'not rewarding North Korea for its bad behaviour' - Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it just yesterday - but at times the six-party process has appeared close to doing exactly that.
Talking to various regional officials about China and North Korea, it is clear that Beijing's lack of candour is crippling in other strategic ways. 'In an ideal world, we'd be talking to them in detail about a mutual regional strategy and contingency plans for any one of the nightmare scenarios you can think of,' said one highly placed South Korean government strategist at the weekend.
'But our discussions are all too safe and stilted for that ... and I fear that mutual suspicion is fast turning into a mutual hostility. If Pyongyang did implode tomorrow, we are all in a position where we could only guess as Beijing's response ... that makes the region a very dangerous place.'
Greg Torode is the Post's chief Asia correspondent
