Neighborly Relations: the Tumen development project and China's security strategy

Abstract

This article considers why China has continued to support multilateral efforts to develop the Tumen River Delta region despite the failure of these efforts to achieve significant economic results. It argues that China has sustained its critical role in Tumen development because the project has served multiple objectives consistent with China's approach to managing its security along its land borders, and in this case its border with the Korean peninsula—an approach which sees its domestic and international security objectives as not only linked but closely intertwined.

Notes

^1. Kuniko Ashizawa, ‘Tokyo's quandary: Beijing's moment in the Six Party Talks: a regional multilateral approach to resolve the DPRK's nuclear problem’, Pacific Affairs, (September 2006), available at: http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-6285533/Tokyo-s-quandary-Beijing-s.html (accessed 6 November 2007); on cooperative security as a reaction to the Bush Doctrine, see Peter Van Ness, ‘Why the Six Party Talks should succeed’, Policy Forum Online, (27 July 2005), available at: www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0562VanNess.html (accessed 12 December 2007).

^2. See for example, Sebastien Colin, ‘A border opening onto numerous geopolitical issues’, China Perspectives 48, (July–August 2003), available at: http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/document385.html (accessed 12 May 2007).

^3. James Cotton, ‘China and Tumen River cooperation: Jilin's coastal development strategy’, Asian Survey 36(11), (November 1996), pp. 1086–1101.

^*Carla P. Freeman is Associate Director of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. She received her Ph.D. from SAIS in 1999. She is the author of numerous policy papers, articles, and book reviews. Her current book project concerns a study of the institutional structure and processes China uses to manage its relationships with the countries with which it shares land borders. In addition to continuing research on Northeast China, her academic interests include the political economy of China's environmental policy. The author is grateful to the US–Korea Institute at SAIS for its support for her research drawn on in this article.

^4. Robert D. Putnam, ‘Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games’, International Organization 42, (Summer 1988), pp. 434–435, 447–448; this is counter to the argument made by Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, focused on the early years of the Tumen project, which explores its relevance to the two-level approach closely following Cotton, ‘China and Tumen River cooperation’. See Jean-Marc F. Blanchard, ‘Giving the unrecognized their due: regional actors, international institutions, and multilateral cooperation in Northeast Asia’, in Daniel W. Drezner, ed., Locating the Proper Authorities: The Interaction of International and Domestic Institutions (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), available at: http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472112899-ch2.pdf.

^5. David Bachman, ‘Domestic sources of Chinese foreign policy’, in Samuel Kim, ed., New Directions and Old Puzzles in Chinese Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), p. 44; for a discussion of the linkages between domestic and foreign policy in China, see also Quansheng Zhao, Interpreting Chinese Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), especially pp. 19–25. During a discussion with a Chinese diplomat at the Chinese Foreign Ministry on 20 March 2009, the diplomat observed of Chinese foreign policy that, ‘Domestic affairs are increasingly intertwined with so-called foreign affairs’.

^6. Peter T.Y. Cheung T.H. and James T.H. Tang, ‘The external relations of China's Provinces’, in David M. Lampton, The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy in the Era of Reform, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 91–222.

^7. Suisheng Zhao, ‘China's periphery policy and its Asian neighbors’, Security Dialogue 30, (1999), p. 336.

^8. M. Taylor Fravel, ‘Securing borders: China's doctrine and force structure for frontier defense’, The Journal of Strategic Studies 30(4–5), (August–October 2007), pp. 709–710. See also, Wu Chujin, Zhongguo Bianjiang Zhengzhi Xue (Beijing: Zhongyang Minzu Daxue Chubanshe, 2005), pp. 200–202.

^9. Author's interviews, including at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, December 2007; Jilin Academy of Social Sciences, December 2008; and an interview at Northeast Normal University, 1994.

^10. See Yu Xintian, ‘The possibility of international economic cooperation on the Korean Peninsula and its problems’, Korean Peninsula: Enhancing Stability and International Dialogue, (1–2 June 2000), pp. 249–254.

^11. Zhu Tingchang () et al., Zhongguo Anquan Huanjing yu Anquan Zhanlue (Beijing: Shishi Chubanshe, 2000), p. 486.

^12. According to an essay by a former commander of the Shenyang Military Region, which includes the region along China's border with the Korean peninsula, the concept of ‘five borders’ formed the basis of the approach to border control. These ‘five borders’ included: ‘using politics to make the border safe, enriching the people to make the borders flourish, having the military strengthen the borders, using diplomacy to make the borders friendly, and using science and technology to control the borders’. See: Chang Waquan, ‘PRC: armament chief reviews PLA participation in border defense’, Jiefangjun Bao Online, (16 January 2009), World News Connection translation, (15 January 2009) (2009920090116477).

^13. ‘Program to revitalize border areas and enrich residents’ lives', China Daily, (25 April 2008), p. 8, available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2008-04/25/content_6642632.htm.

^14. Author's most recent visit to Fangchuan was in December 2008.

^15. Ian Davies, ‘Regional co-operation in Northeast Asia: the Tumen River Area Development Program, 1990–2000: in search of a model for regional economic co-operation in Northeast Asia’, North Pacific Policy Papers 4 26, pp. 19–20, available at: http://www.iar.ubc.ca/programs/PCAPS/pubs/nppp4.pdf (accessed 2 November 2007).

^16. See, for example, Christopher W. Hughes, ‘Tumen River Area Development Programme: frustrated micro-regionalism as a microcosm of political rivalries’, Working Paper no. 57/00 (University of Warwick, Centre for the Study of Globalization and Regionalisation, August 2000, GSGR), p. 11.

^17. Davies, ‘Regional co-operation in Northeast Asia’, p. 46.

^18. See http://www.tumenprogramme.org/index.php?id = 150.

^19. See http://www.tumenprogramme.org/index.php?id = 129.

^20. Cotton, ‘China and Tumen River cooperation’, p. 75.

^21. A Survey of Hunchun, available at: www.ecdc.net.cn/regions/english/tumen/huncun_e01.htm.

^23. Lu Zhongwei, Northeast Asian Economic Cooperation in the Post-Cold War Era: Economic Relations between China, the POK, the DPRK, Japan and Russia (China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, 1993), p. 9, available at: http://igcc.ucsd.edu/pdf/policypapers/pp06.pdf.

^22. Kent Chen, ‘UN plans busiest port in Far East’, South China Morning Post, (22 September 1992); Carla Freeman, China's Reform Challenge: The Political Economy of Reform in Northeast China, 1978–1998, Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, UMI, 1999, pp. 169–170; Alexander Nemets, The Growth of China and Prospects for the Eastern Regions of the Former USSR (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), p. 13.

^24. Freeman, China's Reform Challenge, p. 232.

^25. Deng Shulin, ‘Trade continues to grow on China's borders’, China Today, (January 1994), p. 20.

^26. Satoshi Imai, ‘Japan-Sea-rim economic sphere’, JETRO China Newsletter no. 95, (1991), p. 19.

^27. See http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/009th_issue/97091703.htm.

^28. CSCAP, North Pacific, see: http://www.cscap.org/pacific.htm.

^29. The Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue, see: http://igcc.ucsd.edu/regions/asia_pacific/neacddefault.php#Filling%20a%20Regional%20Void.

^30. Bryan Port, North Korea—The Case for Micro-Level Engagement (Nautilus Institute, 19 February 2002), PF002-02, available at: http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0202A_Port.html.

^31. Jianyi Piao, ‘Studies of the Korean Peninsula issue in China’, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, p. 5, available at: http:icks.korea.ac.kr/conf2/PP/Studies.doc.

^32. Jurgen Kleiner, Korea, A Century of Change (World Scientific, 2001), p. 339.

^33. Mark Clifford, ‘Send money: North Korea appeals for investment in free-trade zone’, Far Eastern Economic Review 156, (30 September 1993), p. 72.

^34. Li Dunqiu, ‘Economic and social implications of China–DPRK border trade for China's northeast’, paper prepared for conference Regional Economic Implications of DPRK Security Behavior: The ‘Bold Switchover’ Concept, National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), 18–19 January 2006, p. 1, available at: http://www.nbr.org/programs/northeast/nkboldswitch.html.

^35. Cotton, ‘China and Tumen River cooperation’, p. 1096.

^36. UNDP Tumen program website, available at: www.tumenprogramme.org/news.php?id = 235.

^37. UNDP Tumen program website, available at: www.tumenprogramme.org/news.php?id = 318.

^38. Satoshi Imai, ‘Japan-Sea-rim economic sphere’, p. 20.

^39. Frederick Crook, ‘Trade on the edges’, The China Business Review, (January–February 1995), pp. 26–30.

^40. The Tumen River Area Development Programme, RDS Sub-Group, United Nations Development Programme New York, Northeast Asia's Tumen River Economic Development Area 1994: Collected Papers (Report A), (1994), p. 16-A.

^41. Richard Pomfret, ‘The Tumen Area Development Programme’, IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin, (Winter 1997–1998), p. 83.

^42. Davies, ‘Regional co-operation in Northeast Asia’, pp. 13–15.

^43. Chan-Woo Lee, Ten Years of Tumen River Area Development: Evaluation and Issues, ERINA Booklet, Vol. 2, (February 2003), p. 7.

^44. Davies, ‘Regional co-operation in Northeast Asia’, pp. 18–26; and Lee, Ten Years of Tumen River Area Development, pp. 41, 55.

^45. Lee, Ten Years of Tumen River Area Development, pp. 44, 47.

^46. Lee, Ten Years of Tumen River Area Development, p. 39; and ‘China: Jilin's Tumen River valley attracts overseas investment’, Xinhua, (18 September 1998), FBIS Transcribed Tex, FBIS-CHI-98-261; see also Davies, ‘Regional co-operation in Northeast Asia’, pp. 33, 38.

^47. Davies, ‘Regional co-operation in Northeast Asia’, pp. 22–23; discussions with officials in Yanji, Tumen and Hunchun, December 2007. See also, Yanbian Investment Guide, official brochure.

^48. Davies, ‘Regional co-operation in Northeast Asia’, p. 51.

^49. David Arase, ‘Economic cooperation in the region where China, Russia, and North Korea meet’, JPRI Working Paper no. 53, (January 1999), available at: http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp53.html.

^50. ‘The Fourth Tumen River Are Development Programme Consultative Commission Meeting and the Conference on Economic Cooperaton in Northeast Asia’, ERINA Report 29, (August 1999), p. 4.

^51. See discussion in Freeman, China's Reform Challenge, pp. 317–323.

^52. Liu Deyu and Zhao Baokin, ‘Promoting economic development by exploiting the advantages of being a late starter—an interview with Wang Yunkun, Secretary of Jilin Provincial CPC Committee’, Beijing Xinhua, (30 December 2000), FBIS Translated Text, FBIS-CHI-2000-1230.

^53. Author's informal discussions with local officials in Jilin and Liaoning, December 2007.

^54. Notably, at a time when the region was under such intense central pressure to restructure its economy, Mayor Jin Shuoren (an ethnic Korean) of Hunchun city in northeast China's Jilin province was selected as a deputy to the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC) in 1998, Xinhua News Agency, (February 1998); this was also the year the xingbian fumin policy was launched, which conferred additional central funding to Yanbian and other minority border regions.

^55. Colin, ‘A border opening onto numerous geopolitical issues’.

^56. Chinese agricultural experts at the UNDP in Pyongyang had also urged the Kim government to reform its economy along Chinese lines that year. Pyongyang had reacted angrily, labeling Deng Xiaoping a traitor to socialism. Gregory Moor, ‘How North Korea threatens China's interests: understanding Chinese “duplicity” on the North Korean issue’, International Relations of the Asia Pacific, (8 October 2007), advance access online available at: http://irap.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/lcm023v1.pdf?ijkey = QzwAzmccgKRKKvy&keytype = ref.

^57. ‘ROK to funnel 1 Mil for Tumen River project’, Yonhap, (10 June 1999), FBIS transcribed text, FBIS-EAS-1999-0609. Pyongyang's decision not to attend the June 1999 meeting may have been linked to political fallout from the North's 1998 rocket launch and subsequent tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang over compliance with the Agreed Framework. It may also have been connected to internal disagreements in the North over economic policy. Reports indicate, for example, that Kim Chong-u, the man known as the ‘designer’ of the Rajin–Sonbong district, and a regular representative of Pyongyang at Tumen meetings, had been purged in late 1997 and rumors circulating at the time anticipated his reinstatement. Given the surge in inter-Korean trade of 1999 and the increasing openness by the North to South Korean visitors, including to a visit by South Korean leader, Kim Dae Jung in June 2000, the latter seems possible. See Yi Kyo-kwan, ‘Reason behind DPRK's purging of Najin–Sonbong Economic Zone promoter noted’, Choson Ilbo, (28 December 2001), FBIS translated text, FBIS-EAS-2001-1228.

^58. Jae Ho Chung, How America Views China–South Korea Bilateralism (Brooking Institution, 2003), p. 4, available at: http://www.brookings.edu/fp/cnaps/papers/chung2003.pdf.

^59. James Goody and Marcus Heiskanen, ‘Discussion of “linking Europe and Northeast Asia”’, Policy Forum Online, 06-17A, (Nautilus Institute, 2 March 2006), available at: http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0617discussion.html; and ‘The Iron Silk Road changing the economic map of Northeast Asia’, Newsweek, Korean edn, (4 July 2004), available at: http://www.vuw.ac.nz/∼caplabtb/dprk/Heiskanen_ISR.doc (accessed 1 December 2007).

^60. John Feffer, ‘A new era for the Korean Peninsula’, Foreign Policy in Focus 5(18), (June 2000), p. 1; Yu Xintian, ‘The possibility of international economic cooperation on the Korean Peninsula and its problems’, p. 254.

^61. Lee, Ten Years of Tumen River Area Development, p. 10.

^62. Davies, ‘Regional co-operation in Northeast Asia’, p. 45.

^63. Market Profiles on Chinese Cities and Provinces, available at: http://www.tdctrade.com/mktprof/china/mpjil.htm.

^64. ‘2005 Consultative Commission Meeting’, Greater Tumen Initiative, available at: http://www.tumenprogramme.org/news.php?id = 7.

^65. For a discussion of the contribution and role of Track II diplomacy, see, for example, Dalia Kaye, Rethinking Track II Diplomacy: The Middle East and South Asia (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, June 2005), available at: http://www.clingendael.nl/publications/2005/20050601_cdsp_paper_diplomacy_3_kaye.pdf (accessed 25 October 2007).

^66. See ‘Full text: China's Peaceful Development Road’, People's Daily, (22 December 2005), available at: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200512/22/eng20051222_230059.html.

^67. See http://www.tumenprogramme.org/.

^68. Zhai Kun, ‘Harmony through East Asia friendship’, China Daily, (19 November 2007), available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2007-11/19/content_6262845.htm.

^69. Author's interview with forum events coordinator, September 2006; ‘Transportation in focus at NE Asia trade forum’, China Daily, (2 September 2008), available at: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2008-09/02/content_6990505.htm.

^70. At the time of the author's December 2007 visit to the site there was a South Korean leather products company producing on the site, a plastics production company planning to open in spring 2008, and a reportedly profitable American-owned company called Trans-Western Polymers, Inc. located near the industrial park in operation.

^71. UNDP TRADP Office, Gateway to Northeast Asia: A New Investment and Trade Frontier (Beijing: UNDP, 1995), p. 1.

^72. , available at: http://xbfm.jl.gov.cn/yanbian/yabian-xdss.htm.

^73. According to a South Korean official, China's Prime Minister Li Peng raised concerns during his 1995 visit to Seoul that ethnic Koreans in China would be encouraged ‘by the solidarity of South Korea’ to launch a separatist movement. ‘China worried about Korean separatism’, Agence France Presse, (4 June 1995).

^74. Outi Luova, ‘Mobilizing transnational linkages for economic development on China's frontier’, Japan Focus, (1 January 2006), available at: http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2007/03/31/mobilizing-transnational-korean-linkages-for-economic-development-on-chinas-frontier/ (accessed 7 September 2007).

^75. Min-Dong Paul Lee, ‘Contested narratives: reclaiming national identity through historical reappropriation among Korean minorities in China’, Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs 5(1), (Winter 2005), p. 109.

^76. Choi Woo-gil, ‘The Korean minority in China: the change of its identity’, Development and Society 30(1), (June 2001), p. 3.

^77. Informal discussion by author with local official, Yanji City, Yanbia, 4 December 2007; also point made by Chinese scholar at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing.

^78. Luova, ‘Mobilizing transnational linkages for economic development on China's frontier’, p. 90.

^79. Discussions between author and Yanbian University faculty member, 4 December 2007.

^80. Lee, ‘Contested narratives’, p. 101.

^81. Cui Faming, 1995, cited in Luova, ‘Mobilizing transnational linkages for economic development on China's frontier’, pp. 80–81.

^82. Choi, ‘The Korean minority in China’, p. 120.

^83. Andrei Lankov, Ethnic Koreans in Yanbian, available at: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/special_view.asp?newsIdx = 4718&categoryCode = 177 (accessed 12 December 2007).

^84. Blog quoting Choson Ibo article entitled ‘China could scrap Yanbian Prefecture as Korean population drops’, which also includes an allusion to the assimilationist policies imposed on the region by China during the Cultural Revolution, (11 March 2006), available at: http://www.rjkoehler.com/2006/03/11/china-could-scrap-yanbian-prefecture-as-korean-population-drops/ (access 15 December 2007).

^85. Goma (2006), as above, p. 879; Yonson Ahn, ‘The Korea–China textbook war—what's it all about?’, International Schulbucforschung 27, (2005), (Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research), posted on Japan Focus, (9 February 2006), available at: http:hnn.us/articles/21617.html (accessed 5 November 2007).

^86. More recently, there has been Chinese media coverage given to the role of the UNDP in the development of minority regions. See, for example, ‘UNDP has plans for China's minority regions’, CCTV.com, (3 April 2004).

^87. Discussions with professors at the Center for China's Borderland History and Geography Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, December 2008.

^88. Yan Longhai, ed., Yanbian de Weilai [Yanbian's Future] (Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe, 2002), p. 143.

^89. Informal discussion with member of Foreign Trade Office, Yanji, 4 December 2007.

^90. Luova, ‘Mobilizing transnational linkages for economic development on China's frontier’, p. 28; also, the arrest of ethnic Korean Chinese scholar of Korean affairs, Jin Xide, on grounds of supplying South Korea with classified information reinforces the perception that chaoxianzu may have divided national loyalties. See ‘Renowned scholar Ji Xide arrested for “spying for South Korea”’, Korea Times, (2 February 2009), available at: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/02/117_39943.html.