China turns netizen anger on Seoul
By Peter Lee
The United States-South Korean Cheonan initiative has apparently fizzled, giving China a chance to shift the geopolitics of Korean policy to its preferred framing: "stability" instead of "security", and economics over military affairs.
In the wake of a less-than-damning presidential statement from the United Nations Security Council, the vaunted joint naval maneuvers scheduled for the Yellow Sea have reportedly been relocated to waters south of the Korean Peninsula, with the aircraft carrier George Washington hovering watchfully near Pusan instead of actually participating.
If the venue for the exercises is shifted, it is unlikely that China can give sole credit to its own vocal objections and the live-fire exercises of its navy for Washington and Seoul's change of heart.
Beijing apparently benefited from the shaky character of theCheonan dossier that the Republic of Korea (ROK) forwarded to the UN Security Council.
Judging from a technical dissection of the evidence reported by two academics in Japan Focus, [1] the South Korean military may have botched the investigation as thoroughly as it botched the initial response to the incident.
Twenty-five officers will be disciplined for shortcomings ranging from drunkenness to falsification of records relating to the sinking. The military will get a do-over on the report itself when full investigation results are released in the next few weeks.
However, even if it is able to plausibly address issues like the magic-marker Korean characters scrawled on the recovered torpedo fragments - an inscription that remarkably survived even as the high-temperature paints coating the torpedo were themselves incinerated - the high tide of indignation orchestrated by the United States, South Korea and Japan has clearly passed.
The decisive factor in the Cheonan affair was probably not the overt intransigence of the Chinese. It was the reticence of the Russians.
Russia dispatched its own experts to review the Cheonanevidence in June. As US President Barack Obama angrily berated China for "willful blindness" in ignoring the "compelling" Cheonanbrief, Moscow's silence was conspicuous.
The inference can be drawn that Russia believed that supporting the US on Iran was sufficient recompense for the US-Russia reset and the Obama administration's diplomatic handling of the exposure of the Russian spy ring, and it was not obligated to line up with the US and Western powers on the Security Council to place China in the familiar role of the irresponsible superpower single-handedly shielding a pariah state against global outrage.
However, given the equivocal relations between Russia and China and the complicating issue of Russia's dealings with India, its sometime ally (and China's sometime competitor), Beijing has no assurance of similar forbearance by Moscow in future. And the recurrence of a Korean crisis is virtually foreordained.
South Korea is planning on the hopeful assumption that Kim Jung-il will die while the current, conservative and pro-US Grand National Party is still in power. If the North, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), botches the succession and instability rears its head, the contradictions between the Chinese approach - dealing with the DPRK as a sovereign state and China as a significant stakeholder through the six-party talks - and the South Korean approach - the rapid delegitimization and eventual extinction of the North's sovereignty and the reunification of the peninsula under the South's hegemony - will become acute.
If North Korea is teetering on the verge of collapse and a wave of excitement is sweeping society south of the border over the possibility of final reunification of an independent Korea after a century of misery and division, it would appear difficult for China to win recognition of its national interest in the future of the peninsula, especially since its national interest seems best served by the continued existence of an impoverished, anti-American buffer state.
Beijing's leverage over the North Korean regime is perhaps overrated, simply because the regime is too rickety to risk the economic reforms that might secure its prosperity and survival.
As to military intervention, China needs only look at its fragile relationship with Taiwan, let alone the US experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, to view with extreme skepticism and caution any suggestions that the People's Liberation Army might be "greeted as liberators" if it descended on Pyongyang on a humanitarian mission in the midst of a political and social crisis.
A cooperative attitude by the South Korean government is, therefore, central to China's hopes for a favorable endgame.
However, China's Korean anxieties have been compounded by the high-profile pursuit of an enhanced US alliance by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his Grand National Party, one that seemed designed to sideline China from decisions concerning the future of the peninsula.
Lee openly delayed negotiations on a trade deal with China and lobbied for a free-trade agreement with the United States, even though the Obama administration was leery.
He also postponed the reversion of operational control of South Korean forces on the peninsula back to Seoul's command in the case of war with the North, a piece of assertiveness by the previous administration that had antagonized the United States.
Lee's most recent gift to the United States was the reorganization of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and the issuance of a report excusing numerous instances of massacres of refugees by American forces during the chaos of the retreat to Pusan - and the charge to the Yalu - as "military necessity".
The Associated Press, which has pursued the issue virtually single-handedly, reported:
Hundreds of petitions to the commission told another story as well, of more than 200 incidents in which the US military, warned about potential North Korean infiltrators in refugee groups, was said to have indiscriminately killed large numbers of innocent South Korean civilians in 1950-51.Declassified US documents uncovered over the past decade do, indeed, show commanders issuing blanket orders to shoot civilians during that period. In 2007-2009 the commission verified several such US attacks, including the napalm-bombing of a cave jammed with refugees in eastern South Korea, which survivors said killed 360 people, and an air attack that killed 197 refugees gathered in a field in the far south.The liberal-led commission, with no power to award reparations, recommended Seoul negotiate with the US for compensation for survivors of what it agreed were indiscriminate attacks. But the government of President Lee Myung-bak, elected in December 2007, has taken no action.Lee's Grand National Party had warned during his election campaign that the truth panel's work could damage the US-South Korean alliance.Late last year, expiring terms on the 15-member commission enabled the Lee government to appoint more sympathetic commissioners, who opted not to extend the body's life by two years and instead to shut it down on June 30. Lee, the new panel chief, withdrew from distribution a 2009 English-language report on commission findings.The commissioners also toughened the criteria for faulting US wartime actions, demanding documentary proof US forces in each case knew they were killing civilians, commission investigators told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because of their sensitive position.In a rush of final decisions June 29-30, the commission found no serious US wrongdoing in the remaining cases of civilian killings, attributing them to military necessity. [2]
In response, the Obama administration, infuriated by the Japanese government's flailing efforts to move the US Futenma Marine Corps air base off Okinawa, decided to put its eggs in Lee Myung-bak's basket.
It encouraged Lee's ambitions to boost South Korea's global profile, arranging for the November Group of 20 summit and 2011 Nuclear Security Summit to be held in Seoul.
Obama abandoned his previous aversion to the KORUS free-trade agreement and called for its prompt ratification.
And he threw the full weight of American prestige and influence behind South Korea's call for the Cheonan incident to be addressed by the UN Security Council.
However, the Cheonan incident did not prove to be a galvanizing, 9/11-type event for Lee.
The political opposition declined to roll over and grant Lee the leadership status president George W Bush claimed after the World Trade Center towers fell. Skeptical commentators dogged the investigation of the sinking with alternate friendly-fire scenarios and questions about the conduct of the probe that the government was unable to completely rebut.
Local elections that were expected to serve as a validation of Lee's approach to the Cheonan incident and give him a mandate for a stern response to North Korea were, instead, a humiliating repudiation.
Now, the lukewarm response of the UN Security Council, the embarrassing dithering over the location and content of the joint South Korean-US maneuvers, and China's call to "turn the page" on the Cheonan incident all indicate that China has an opening for counter-measures for this and future crises.
As it has done in virtually every diplomatic tangle since 1979, China will attempt to shift the terms of engagement away from the unfavorable calculus of regional security and military force to the deployment of economic carrots and sticks to influence the behavior of South Korea and the United States and lessen the pro-US tilt of the Lee government.
With United States and South Korea increasingly engaged in China's domestic markets, Beijing has more options available than the traditional enticements of big ticket purchases of ships and jet aircraft, or granting preferential access to real estate and investment opportunities to influential foreign businessmen.
China has apparently decided to refine its diplomatic strategy to introduce a new stick - what might be termed a popular-opinion component - to its economic relations arsenal.
Observers with long memories of China's 150-year history of anti-foreign boycotts, strikes, protest marches and embassy outrages might be forgiven for calling it the xenophobia option.
An editorial in China's Global Times entitled ''A test of Chinese people's diplomacy'' offers an insight into lessons learned and China's probable approach to future crises:
China should consider the Yellow Sea drill a chance to test its non-governmental diplomatic clout. The country is no longer a uniform mass with only one voice. The public can explore ways to complement Beijing's official diplomacy.It might not be good for a government to handle the crisis with a harsh hand. But the Chinese people should act in a way that compels US government's attention. It is the Chinese consumers and workers who contribute to the hard currency to buy US Treasury bonds, and support struggling US companies during the financial crisis. Washington may not have the reason or guts to ignore their demand.There need to be more channels for these voices to be expressed in order to warn the US. And, grass-roots patriotism needs real tests to grow into an effective alternative power to China's diplomacy.The Chinese media may also help amplify the public outcry. Public anger or protests should not be considered a burden by the Chinese government, but an additional force on the bargaining table. If China does not try to explore various means to press Washington, it will become more difficult to deal with future incidents. [3]
On one level, the editorial indirectly acknowledges China's diplomatic difficulties. With the eurozone, Japan and South Korea more or less solidly in the US camp and the friendship of India and Russia by no means assured, the Chinese government is relatively isolated.
Efforts to counter US influence in the western Pacific militarily will simply play into Washington's hands by increasing anxiety over the Chinese threat and encourage an even greater American presence.
Judging from the editorial, China recognizes that its most effective weapons are economic, and they can be leveraged more effectively as expressions of popular outrage with the Chinese government presenting itself to distressed foreign governments as a moderating force.
Indeed, nationalism and a thirst for vigilante justice targeting anyone from rude waitresses to corrupt officials to countries deemed insufficiently friendly and respectful have emerged as a remarkable source of potential energy, particularly on the Internet.
It is easy to imagine China permitting the expression and, through the media, "amplification" of anti-foreign feeling to threaten the economic interests of countries that challenge China's interests and self-esteem.
The strategy would have the added benefit of using vociferous and intolerant nationalism to crowd out domestic criticism of Communist Party rule and its various shortcomings, which threaten to become a dominant theme on China's lively, massive, and indignant domestic Internet despite extensive monitoring and censorship operations and the Herculean efforts of paid sock puppets to dilute and redirect unsuitable threads.
There are increasing signs that the Chinese government prefers to repackage its own media operations as channels for expressions of useful popular feelings and unobtrusively guided image and issue management, and not just explicit platforms for official government and party positions.
A flagship for this new experiment appears to be People's Daily Online English edition. As it attempts to keep up with China's rambunctious local tabloids, People's Daily Online has made some questionable editorial choices recently, including pushing a story that the Taliban is training monkeys to attack American troops in Afghanistan with assault rifles. [4]
It has also allowed posts on its forums that serve to decouple the website from official foreign policy positions and turn it into an expression of the purported concerns and priorities of Chinese netizens.
China has been awash with posts, editorials and articles flaying the United States and South Korea for planning military exercises in the Yellow Sea. As part of that trend, People's Daily Online featured a forum post [5] including some photographs of a US aircraft carrier in flames, obviously faked but apparently also extremely gratifying to the hypernationalist audience.
In an indication of the convoluted path of content across the Chinese Internet, the People's Daily English-language post was an uncredited cut-and-paste of an EastSouthWestNorth (ESWN) post [6], itself a credited translation of a Chinese-language post at my1510.cn [7] that reposted (with a credit only to the author, Jia Qingsen) an opinion piece in Nanfang Daily [8]. The opinion piece glossed the sina.com micro-blog hoax-post that had been pulled - but not until after it had created a sensation on the Chinese Internet.
Commentary on the photos discussed the role of popular opinion, at least for an English-speaking audience:
When there is such a vigorous official opposition, it is no surprise that some Chinese netizen would make up the story that "an American aircraft carrier has been bombed". In a certain sense, this can be regarded as the interplay between the official and civilian sectors in response to the South Korea-American military exercise in the Yellow Sea.
Jia Qingsen at Nanfang Daily, while decrying the false rumor (and reproducing two of the best pictures), declared it "reflected the feelings of the netizens (I don't know if it could be elevated to the level of 'national will' or not) and is worthy of being savored and heeded."
Obviously, neither accuracy nor copyright will stand in the way of the Chinese media savoring, heeding and pushing a crowd-pleasing piece of xenophobia.
It should also be noted that the nation most vulnerable to attacks led by aggrieved netizens is not the United States, but South Korea. The Super Junior jihad in early June, before the current Yellow Sea crisis emerged, gives an idea of the latent energy of anti-Korean xenophobia on the Chinese web.
A free ticket giveaway for a concert at the Shanghai Expo by the K-pop group Super Junior became a fiasco when tens of thousands of fans turned up for thousands of promised tickets, only to find that 500 were available. The infuriated Chinese fans vented their anger by manhandling and spitting on security guards, apparently rousing the patriotic ire of China's vast network of pop-averse World of Warcraft gamers.
Hackers among the gamers initiated a furious assault against websites and online forums catering to the "brain-damaged" fans of the South Korean group, as well as South Korea's national portal.
As ESWN reported [9], progress of the jihad was live-blogged with entries like:
414 QQ "brain-damaged" groups related to Super Junior have been bombed out. Hongke/Hacker have taken the official Super Junior website out. Blood has taken the Super Junior Forum at Baidu out. Music download statistics have been banned. Renren's Super Junior section is half-paralyzed.
Hacked websites were adorned with obscene and racist comments and demands that Koreans depart China, mixed with more forgiving notations to Chinese fans along the lines of "I don't look down on your brain-damagedness, I just want you to stand on the side of your homeland, China" and heartfelt patriotic sentiments such as "i love china f**k kr".
The Chinese government apparently decided that the anti-Korean hostility of a vocal segment of the population was perhaps not a bug, but a useful feature in diplomacy.
On July 12, Global Times upped the pressure surrounding the Yellow Sea exercises and invoked the element of popular opinion to illustrate the threat to South Korean interests:
Public sentiments in China and South Korea vis-a-vis each other have fallen to a new low in recent years. Some Chinese people have been comparing the US-South Korea drill to the visit to Yasukuni Shrine by Japan's former prime minister Koizumi Junichiro.If a US aircraft carrier enters the Yellow Sea, it will mean a major setback to Seoul's diplomacy, as hostility between the peoples of China and South Korea will probably escalate, which Beijing and Seoul have been working for years to avoid. [10]
For South Korean businesspeople, the official displeasure of the Chinese government and its vindictive bureaucracy would be bad enough; but popular Chinese agitation against South Korean businesses and individuals, fanned by a reckless media, that the government claims it cannot control and will not suppress, would be even worse.
Indeed, as the Yellow Sea dispute heated up, the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo editorialized:
The US-South Korea alliance forms the cornerstone of the South's national security and diplomacy. But China is South Korea's largest trading partner, and it also has a huge influence on peace and reunification on the Korean Peninsula. The time has come for Seoul to factor into its diplomacy and security policies both China and its intensifying competition with the US. [11]
Korea Times interviewed Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group under the headline, "Korea's future lies with China - economically".
"[E]conomically speaking, South Korea's future is China. That's very clear," said Ian Bremmer..."I think what we need to recognize is that South Korea's long-term economic interest is really much more aligned with China. The growth of bilateral trade between the two countries is overwhelming. But its security interest is much more aligned with the US.China is already South Korea's largest export destination, and the bilateral trade is larger than the total trade South Korea has with the US and Japan combined. In the first four months of this year, the trade volume skyrocketed 48% over the same period last year, according to China's Ministry of Commerce.Analysts say China will use South Korea's economic dependence as a bargaining chip to expand its political muscle, pulling Seoul away from the US political sphere of influence and nudging it closer to Beijing.South Korea can reduce China's advance if it can be impervious from the pull of its economic black hole. But Bremmer is not optimistic."The economic integration between South Korea and China has been ongoing and will continue in the future," he forecasted. [12]
As the current crisis recedes, it appears that China's economic leverage - enhanced by the threat of xenophobic nationalism - increases, and President Lee Myung-bak's ability to drive the next Korean security crises into a more pro-US outcome decreases.
Notes
5. Chinese Masturbate Over "The Bombing of American Aircraft Carrier"?, People's Daily, July 7, 2010.
Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.
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