China and North Korea / Zhou Enlai

In a current affairs magazine that I enjoyed as a student , there was an article that said General Cho Nam-ki, a Korean-Chinese, was selected as the forth-lagest general in the Chinese Army. There was an article saying that China treated ethnic Koreans especially among Chinese minorities.

I was helped by a Korean-Chinese caregiver when my mother was hospitalized in March. And I talked with many Korean-Chinese caregivers around her. Their national identity was definitely Chinese. Even when the Chinese were starving, the Chinese government supplied rice to the ethnic Koreans, they say. For China, North Korea is said to be like lips. Because if you don’t have lips, your teeth get cold. It seems that China’s ethnic Korean policy has succeeded.

Among ethnic minorities in China, only ethnic Koreans have a powerful motherland. The Chinese government will not be able to treat ethnic Koreans like Uighurs or Tibetans.

My Google Blog is visited by readers from more than 40 countries around the world. The Chinese do not visit. But if write that North Korea is wiser to stay closer to the U.S.than to China, there is a visiting Chinese. People disguised as celebrities in the U.S. or international organizations approach by showing carefully forged U.S. passports. At first, I thought they were simple scammers. However, given its sensitivity to China-related issues, the move is believed to be aimed at China’s national interest.

MSS, China’s intelligence agency, is known as an excellent intelligence agency that uses Chinese people from around the world as an informant, like Israel’s Mossad.

I think it’s not just about North Korea’s relationship with China that it should stay away from China and get closer to the U.S. or that it should be loyal to it’s socialist ally, China. It is talking about self-reliant North Korea. In China, during Mao Zedong’s time, the idea of a confrontational war between the two armies prevailed. For example, the confrontation between materialism and ideology, or between the landlord class and the peasant class. However, Zhou Enlai smoothed the confrontation with the practical ideas(實事求是). As Zhou Enlai thinks, North Korea should also pursue objective and practical diplomatic relations that have left ideology. By doing so, the North Korea will be able to further revive its self-reliance.

The idea that Zhou Enlai put at the center when guiding economic maneuvering was ‘the practical ideas(實事求是)’. He emphasized stability and overall balance, arguing that work should proceed in light of objective laws. He aimed for balanced development of the national economy, while rationally setting the pace of development of the national economy.

Zhou Enlai was a diplomat with a high international reputation. He consistently pursued independent diplomacy. He insisted on achieving international economic cooperation with a spirit of uniform equality, reciprocity and respect for sovereignty, both large and small. Zhou Enlai, as a pioneer of new Chinese diplomacy, buried the humiliating diplomacy of the old China for 100 years and brought a new wind to diplomacy. Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong, together in the early 1970s, established diplomatic relations between China and the United States and normalized diplomacy between China and Japan, is one of the notable examples.

- [MOUTAKUTOU TO SHUONRAI] by Susumu Yabuki -