Large, moody and dangerous

Andrei Lankov – The Korea Times

It is clear, that since mid-July, the relations between South Korea and China, which in recent years had been quite friendly, have begun to deteriorate quickly. The reason for this crisis is widely known: in July, despite stern warnings from Beijing, the South Korean government decided to deploy the THAAD anti-missile system of the U.S. which is hopefully capable of protecting South Korea against a possible North Korean missile attack.

While the THAAD system is said to be technically incapable of intercepting Chinese missiles (at least this is what the U.S. and South Korean governments claim), the decision itself greatly annoyed the Chinese government. Rightly or wrongly, it’s seen to be what they consider a dangerous precedent which might eventually open the gate for large scale deployment of the U.S. anti-missile defense systems in East Asia ― a development China has reason to worry about, since it will reduce the efficiency of its nuclear deterrent.

So, predictably, China is expressing its displeasure ― and, remarkably, it is frequently done in ways which might appear novel to the South Koreans.

Do you remember the “mad cow crisis” of 2008, also known as the “U.S. beef protests”? Back then, the Korean public worried that U.S. beef was contaminated by prions, dangerous and infectious biological agents. This panic was, frankly, based on the thinnest of evidence (or, to be completely honest, was absolutely groundless), but it was embraced and flamed up by two powerful interest groups: South Korean farmers who didn’t want American competition and the South Korean leftist/nationalist opposition which dreamt of revenge after its humiliating defeat in the 2007 elections.

This led to massive public rallies, the biggest of which were attended by many tens of thousands of people. These rallies and media campaigns created bad publicity for American beef which it has yet to overcome.

Those rallies probably produced some impact on the trade and relations between South Korea and the Unites States. However, back then, nobody expected that the American authorities would retaliate by, say, insisting that Korean mobile phones have dangerously high level of emissions of radiation and thus (due to purely medical reasons, of course!) should be banned from sale in the United States. Nobody worried that the U.S. government would ban the import of Korean videos or force press entertainment conglomerates to cancel tours of Korean artists. This is not how business and politics are conducted in the United States where the idea of keeping economic interests and diplomacy divided, whenever possible, has massive support.

However, in the case of China, things are very different. The Chinese government did not limit itself to verbal protestations: in recent weeks it also took measures aimed at downsizing cultural exchanges with South Korea, while also starting their campaigns against some kinds of South Korean products.

Recently, Chinese customers have learned from the official press (no other press obviously exists in China) that the use of Korean cosmetics might be dangerous for their health. At the same time, some meetings by Chinese fans of South Korean TV dramas were cancelled with very lame excuses, while South Korean businessmen who have grown accustomed to frequent trips to China discovered that it’s now significantly more difficult to get business visas necessary for such trips.

This is not to say that China is a country prone to taking especially aggressive or neo-imperialist stands. After all, all great powers, including the United States, have done quite nasty things in dealing with their weaker neighbors ― otherwise, they wouldn’t be great powers. However, the Chinese style of diplomacy is remarkably different from the style employed by the United Sates.

In essence, the Chinese rely on a holistic approach: they use not only regular diplomatic tools, but also cultural and personal exchanges as well as many kinds of low-level economic interaction as weapons of foreign policy. Since China is an authoritarian state where all businesses and NGOs have no choice but to listen carefully to what the government suggests, one cannot help but smile at the recent remarks by some South Korean parliamentarians who insist that China “should separate diplomacy and the economy”. Of course, this is not going to happen. This is not how things are done in China.

For Korea, this might be bad news. Like it or not, the significance of China in Korean foreign policy is likely to keep growing in the foreseeable future. So, one should get used to the new situation and realize: it is costly to challenge any great power, but it’s especially costly to challenge China.