China’s new territorial strategies towards North Korea: security, development, and inter-scalar politics

Abstract

This paper analyzes China’s North Korea strategy, focusing on its territorial practices and representations. Traditionally, China’s territorial visions of North Korea mainly reflected geopolitical imperatives. However, China has recently remobilized its territorial strategies in geoeconomic terms. The study shows that China’s territorial strategies are to enhance geopolitical security through geoeconomic means. To grasp these dynamics, this paper examines three territorial features: China’s geopolitical visions, regional development projects, and the scalar politics of its North Korea policy. The central finding is that China’s North Korea strategy cannot be reduced to any single dimension, as these three facets are closely intertwined.

Keywords:

• China
• geopolitical security
• inter-scalar politics
• North Korea
• territorial strategies

Notes

1. Domosh (2013) re-conceptualizes geoeconomics as discourses that consist of images, imaginaries, and meanings.

2. In another paper, he also claims that “Geoeconomics, in other words, is useful as a term insofar as it allows us to name an array of quotidian assumptions and practices that emerge out of the context of free trade and the resulting force of borderless economic flows” (Sparke 1998, 70).

3. See also his new book, Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (Kaplan 2014).

4. http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/china_dprk.htm (accessed April 10, 2014).

5. http://www.chinaneast.gov.cn/static/e11315/11315.htm (accessed April 10, 2014).

6. http://english.shaanxi.gov.cn/articleAboutgov/aboutgov/govannouncement/200909/11180_1.html (accessed April 10, 2014).

7. Interviewees from Changchun and Yanbian took starkly different positions on the relation between the Chang-Ji-Tu Project and Sino-DPRK economic cooperation.

8. Many interviewees that I met in Liaoning Province recognized the disinterest of the Liaoning government in the Hwanggumphyong project.

9. One North Korean scholar also affirmed that the Liaoning provincial government is not enthusiastic about the joint development projects (personal interview, November 16, 2011).

10. One professor at the Yanbian University said that the Jilin government applied the “Changchun-Jilin Integration” project to the central government to gain approval as a national-level project, but it was rejected (personal interview, June 3, 2011).