Chan Young Bang

Opinion | A China-brokered peace deal on the Korean peninsula would be a victory for everyone

To achieve this, Beijing must stop being adversarial and work with Seoul to come up with a denuclearisation-for-modernisation deal Pyongyang can’t refuse

With a prosperous peninsula, free of nuclear weapons and US troops, Xi would secure his legacy as a top statesman and China’s peaceful rise as a world power

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Chan Young Bang

Published: 3:30am, 26 Jun 2023

China can cement its rise as the pre-eminent power in Northeast Asia by brokering a long-awaited peace on the Korean peninsula. This is a project Beijing should undertake in close cooperation with Seoul and would mean ridding the peninsula of all nuclear weapons, promoting economic prosperity for both Koreas, and paving the way for the removal of all US troops.

To achieve this, three conditions have to be met. First, China must stop being adversarial and instead pursue a foreign policy focused on the region’s shared interests.

As former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev once noted, foreign policy is a continuation of domestic policy. This makes ideology inseparable from foreign policy – as seen in Chinese Lieutenant General Jing Jianfeng’s recent condemnation, at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, of the Biden administration for attempting “to divide the world into ideologically driven camps and provoke confrontation”.

Peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom are aspirations outlined by President Xi Jinping in his Global Civilisation Initiative. These, which could be the principal tenets of China’s foreign policy, are particularly relevant when it comes to the Korean peninsula. If Xi can seize the opportunity to stabilise the peninsula on these terms, it would define his statesmanship.

Second, China must establish a strategic partnership with South Korea and jointly introduce a denuclearisation policy for the North. This must be a proposal that all the stakeholders will endorse, including the United States. Beijing, with the support of Seoul, Washington and others, can then offer a package deal that Pyongyang can’t refuse.

This deal must include the lifting of sanctions, security guarantees, a peace treaty with South Korea and sufficient funds for North Korea’s economic modernisation. In return, Kim Jong-un’s regime could implement market-oriented reforms and replace its hostile ideology with an amicable one. North Korea must be persuaded to contribute to global peace and development as a non-nuclear-weapons state.