BEIJING: China's concerns about the onset of a nuclear arms race in East Asia are beginning to override Beijing's long-term worry of seeing a collapsed state on its border, according to analysts and diplomats here. Despite Pyongyang's nuclear brinkmanship of recent years China has been loath to push its long-term ally and neighbour too hard for fears it might precipitate a regime collapse and chaos that would provide reason for intervention by the United States.
But North Korea's nuclear test in October has focused China's fears on the chilling possibility of a full-scale nuclear arms race on the Korean peninsula and forced Beijing to engage in intense bilateral and multilateral negotiations to reverse its course.
“The threat of a nuclear arms race in East Asia is by no means minor to the threat posed to China's interests by separatist forces in Taiwan," Zhu Feng, a scholar on international relations from Beijing University, wrote of the island that mainland China considers a part of its sovereign territory.
"A nuclear arms race would destabilise the regional geopolitical balance and render China's current goal of building a ‘harmonious world' very difficult if not impossible," Zhu warned in the weekly ‘Southern Weekend'.
Signs that China is hard pressed to strike a balance between maintaining stability in North Korea and preventing a wider nuclear crisis in the region emerged earlier this year when Pyongyang conducted a series of provocative missile launches in July.
An internal debate among Chinese policy makers about how far their country should prop up the Stalinist regime of Kim Jong-il resulted in Beijing's support of a tough UN Security Council resolution that condemned the missile tests.
The same scenario was repeated when North Korea conducted an underground test on Oct 9 and declared itself a nuclear power. Emerging from its decades-long position of neutrality at the UN, China voted in favour of imposing sanctions on Kim's regime. In the past, Beijing had consistently impeded efforts to impose UN sanctions on North Korea despite evidence of breaches to the international law.
"This (nuclear) test changed everything," says Fu Mengzi, an expert at China International Relations Studies Institute. "Although the international community has not recognised Pyongyang's status as a nuclear power, the regional situation has changed. Japan and South Korea are bound to take measures to cope with this new reality."
North Korea has insisted for several years that it has nuclear weapons. But its October nuclear test provided the first, albeit hard to verify, confirmation that Pyongyang has joined the club of nuclear powers.
The new reality is unsettling for China, which has been the only confirmed nuclear power in the region. According to Zhu Feng of Beijing University, Beijing believes Japan and South Korea could both acquire nuclear arsenals in a time frame of three to eight months.
Already in 2004, South Korea admitted that it had secretly produced small quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium and conducted nuclear experiments.
Yet it is the possibility of Japan -- China's wartime enemy, going nuclear that worries Chinese policy makers most. Japanese foreign minister Taro Aso has created political waves by declaring that "it is important to have various discussions" on the development of atomic arsenal as "another way of thinking".
Conservative Japanese politicians have now argued for a while that Japan's pacifistic 60-year-old constitution no longer reflects the political landscape of the 21st century, in particular China's military modernisation and North Korea's nuclear capabilities.
During the premiership of Junichiro Koizumi, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) became increasingly vocal about the need to raise the country's military profile in the region and re-assert Japan's regional leadership role. Koizumi dispatched troops to assist US-reconstruction efforts in Iraq and sent ships to the Indian Ocean to provide fuel for coalition forces in Afghanistan.
The issue of nuclear arms race is set to dominate talks between Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his Japanese and South Korean counterparts when they hold their annual East Asian regional summit in the Philippines in mid-December. "The key problem is how to make the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue go back to the track of peaceful solution through dialogue and negotiations as soon as possible," Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said at a press conference in Beijing this week.
The spectre of a regional arms race is also providing impetus to Beijing’s fresh efforts to restart dialogue with Japanese leaders after a long diplomatic hiatus.
Having refused to hold bilateral summits with former Japanese premier Junichiro Koizumi over his visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine, Beijing is now working to make mutual visits by both countries' state leaders a regular event, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
"China will present some new proposals to strengthen exchanges and cooperation in areas of politics, economy and culture," Cui said of the upcoming meeting between Premier Wen Jiabao and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the East Asia summit in Cebu on Dec11.
Beijing is also trying to revive the stalled six-party disarmament talks that along with China and North Korea, includes the US, South Korea, Japan and Russia. The talks began late 2003 but Pyongyang walked away from the negotiating table in 2005 to protest financial sanctions imposed by Washington.
After intense diplomacy by Beijing, North Korea agreed in October to resume negotiations, but no date has been set yet.
