China is watching North Korea’s friendship with Russia

Chinese tourists huddle together against a sharp autumn breeze inside a 12-story building, vying for the best spot to photograph the point where their country meets Russia and North Korea.

The three national flags overlap on a map on the wall, explaining that Fanchuan in the northeastern corner of China is a unique place for this reason.

“I’m very proud to be standing here… Russia to my left and North Korea to my right,” declares one woman as she travels with her colleagues. “There are no borders between people.”

This may be too optimistic. Like the piece of sandwiched Chinese territory she traveled to see, Beijing is also sandwiched between its sanctioned neighbors.

Fears of a budding alliance between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un peaked in recent weeks when it was reported that North Korea had sent thousands of troops to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And that was before Pyongyang launched a banned intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday in its longest flight on record — after weeks of intensifying anti-Seoul rhetoric.

“China wants to establish a relationship with a reasonable, high level of control over North Korea,” said Christopher Green, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. “And North Korea’s relationship with Russia threatens to undermine that.”

If Xi cannot mold the Putin-Kim alliance to suit his interests, China may well be caught in the middle as Western anger and anxiety grow.

Moscow and Pyongyang deny that North Korean soldiers are heading to Ukraine, which many see as a major escalation. But the United States says it has seen evidence of this following allegations by South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence.

The first reports came just before Chinese leader Xi Jinping met his Russian counterpart at the BRICS summit in early October, overshadowing a meeting that was meant to send a defiant signal to the West.

It seems increasingly as if China’s allies are slipping out of its control. Beijing, the senior triad partner, seeks to be the stable leader of a new world order that is not led by the United States. But that’s hard to do when one ally has started a war in Europe and another is accused of abetting the invasion.

“China is unhappy with the way things are going,” says Mr. Green, “but they are trying to keep their displeasure relatively quiet.”

This is of course a sensitive subject for Beijing, judging by the reaction to our presence in a border town where tourists seem to be welcome but journalists are not.

We were in public places all the time, but the team was stopped, repeatedly interrogated, monitored, and our footage was deleted.

The hotel demanded that I keep my passport for “my safety and the safety of others”. The police visited our hotel rooms and also blocked the road to the port in Hunchun, which would give us a closer look at the ongoing trade between Russia and China.

At the observation deck in Fangchuan, it is clear that most tourists have come to see North Korea.

“I saw a person riding a bicycle,” says one girl, peering through the telescope. Her friend rushes over to see, “Oooh! It’s such a mysterious country.”

The Tyumen River flows nearby, smoothly cutting through all three countries. It is China’s gateway to the Sea of ​​Japan, where it has territorial disputes with Tokyo.

China’s 1,400 km (870 mi) border has some of the only platforms with a clear view of North Korea. South Korea’s border with North Korea is a nearly impenetrable barrier, a heavily mined and fortified demilitarized zone.

Someone offers me binoculars. Some people ride around the village on old bicycles, but there are few other signs of life. One of the largest buildings is a school with a sign urging children to “study well for Chosun,” another name for North Korea.

“North Korea has always been our neighbor. We are not alien to it,” says a middle-aged man. “Being able to see how they live makes me realize that China is prosperous and strong.”

Kim Jong-un’s regime would certainly struggle to survive without its biggest benefactor, China, which accounts for more than 90% of its foreign trade, including food and fuel.

It wasn’t always like that. In the early 1960s, it was the Chinese who fled from hunger across the shallow Tumen River. Some even went to school in North Korea, because they believed that there was a better education system at that time.

North Korea’s economy collapsed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which had been its main source of aid and cheap oil, leading to severe food shortages and eventual famine.

Soon, refugees from North Korea began making their way across the often frozen Tumen River, risking being shot, to escape hunger, poverty and repression. There are now more than 30,000 in South Korea, and an unknown number still live in China.

“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea had no choice but to maintain good relations with China, which was its only benefactor,” says Mr Green.

But now, he adds, Russia “offers an alternative, and the North Koreans want to take advantage of that.”

Mao Zedong, the first leader of the People’s Republic of China, compared the relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang to the closeness between “lips and teeth”: “If the lips disappear, the teeth will be cold.”

Now, according to sociologist Aidan Foster-Carter, who has studied North Korea for several decades, Beijing feels it is suffering from a lack of gratitude because Kim’s lips are “kissing elsewhere.”

“North Korea has always been a friend from hell for both Russia and China. They take as much money as they can and (then) do what they like.”

Analysts note that over the past year, Kim has been constantly flattering Putin through Xi. Although Kim Jong Un has not met with Xi since 2019, he has met with Putin twice in the past year or so. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought the two sanctions leaders closer than ever. Putin is looking for more support for his war, while Kim wants to bolster his regime with alliances and attention.

From the Chinese border, it is easy to see how relations between the two sides are developing.

A train whistle interrupts the chatter of tourists, and a steam engine pulling a long line of freight cars slowly sweeps across a railway bridge from Russia to North Korea. He stops in front of a Korean sign facing China that reads: “To a new victory!”

According to US estimates, Kim Jong-un sold more than a million artillery shells and Grad missiles to Moscow for use in Ukraine, which North Korea denies.

But there is no doubt that the pair have stepped up cooperation since signing a security pact in June to help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.

“You have very tough and official language about Xi Jinping on what is really a historically significant occasion – the 75th anniversary of relations between the People’s Republic of China,” Mr Foster-Carter says.

“And yet, on Putin’s birthday, Kim calls him ‘my closest friend.’ If you are Xi Jinping, what are you thinking?”

It’s hard to know because China has shown no signs of meddling in the Russia-North Korea alliance.

The US has noticed Beijing’s concerns, and this time the two rivals may have similar goals.

Last week, State Department officials raised the issue of North Korean troops in Russia with Chinese diplomats.

Beijing does have options — it has cut oil and coal supplies to North Korea in the past and complied with U.S. sanctions to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

China is already fighting U.S. accusations that it is selling Russia components that aid its invasion of Ukraine. Beijing’s trade with Moscow is also booming, even as it struggles to cope with Western tariffs.

Xi has kept Russia close because he needs Putin’s help to challenge the US-led world order. But he did not stop trying to restore ties with Europe, Great Britain and even the USA. China is also in talks with Japan and South Korea to ease historic tensions.

But Kim’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric against Seoul has the South debating again whether it should have its own nuclear arsenal. North Korean troops on the Ukrainian battlefield will only upset Beijing’s plans even more.

In this regard, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has already discussed “concrete countermeasures” and talked about strengthening cooperation with Ukraine and NATO in the field of security.

A nuclear-armed South Korea or an “East Asian NATO” are not ideal for a region where China wants more influence. An emboldened Kim could also seek stronger U.S. support — in the form of warships or even weapons — toward his allies, Seoul and Tokyo.

“For a very long time, China has followed a policy of three nos in Northeast Asia – one of those nos was ‘no nuclear North Korea.’ It was clearly a failure,” says Mr Green.

Beijing now fears that an alliance with Russia could destabilize North Korea, adding: “It might even benefit Vladimir Putin to a degree that it doesn’t really benefit Xi Jinping.”

Experts say Beijing is as concerned as the West about what military technology Putin might sell Kim in exchange for troops.

“Satellites, definitely,” says Mr Foster-Carter. “But Putin is bad – not crazy. Russia knows as much as China knows that North Korea is a loose cannon. Giving (Kim) more technology for nuclear weapons is not good for anyone.”

Experts believe Xi is unlikely to do anything drastic because China needs a stable North Korea – if he ends aid, he is likely to have a refugee crisis on the border.

But Kim can also make a decision.

Despite Russia paying for the missiles and troops, Mr Foster-Carter says it is China that has “really been holding North Korea down all this time, often through gritted teeth. I just wonder when Beijing will turn against Pyongyang?”

Kim’s deadly adventure could also seriously affect those closer to home – the 25 million North Koreans who are cut off from the outside world and completely dependent on the regime for their survival.

Across the Tumen River in Fanchuan, a North Korean soldier watches us and we watch him.

A couple rises from the snack stalls selling noodles and fried octopus on sticks on the Chinese side. And, apparently, he hears how the tourists who take pictures with the latest cameras and phones, which are forbidden to him, laugh.

A shallow river is a bay that neither tourists nor soldiers can swim across.