The Sino-DPRK Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, signed on July 11, 1961, turns 59 this year.

Since the treaty comes up for renewal every twenty years, this Saturday marks 365 days until Beijing and Pyongyang must reconfirm their military commitments to one another.

China’s superpower support — which has saved North Korea once before through its intervention in the Korean War — plays a crucial role in balancing against the U.S.’s regional alliances with Japan and South Korea.

Due to North Korea’s close proximity, the relationship is strategically valuable to China as well. Mao Zedong famously described the two countries as being as close as “lips and teeth,” even though their differences sometimes mean they’re more like chalk and cheese.

Yet recently, some in the Middle Kingdom have begun to question whether it’s worth the risk of committing itself to a second Korean War that now seems most likely to be caused by North Korean nuclear belligerence.

THE TREATY’S ORIGINS

China’s military came to the rescue of North Korea in October 1950, when Chinese troops entered the Korean War and pushed back advancing UN soldiers who had nearly made it all the way to the Amrok River.

Even though the Korean peninsula’s proximity has made it important to China’s security for centuries, the conflict was nonetheless not particularly desirable from Beijing’s point of view.

Kim Il Sung’s attack on June 25, 1950 that sparked the Korean War had been months in the planning and had required permission from none other than Joseph Stalin beforehand.

The leadership in Beijing had initially been against such an attack, preferring instead to focus on economic development following the end of the Chinese Civil War and the founding of the PRC.

Mao agreed to back the invasion only after Kim Il Sung had informed him that he now had the blessing of the Soviet leader himself.

Beijing’s concerns were justified though, manifesting themselves in a costly three-year conflict that claimed hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives — including Mao’s eldest son. The war ended in an armistice, with American troops stationed in the South and Chinese troops in the North.

Tensions in the Sino-DPRK relationship were added to in 1956 as a result of what is known as the “August faction incident,” when Chinese- and Soviet-backed factions within North Korea unsuccessfully attempted to oust Kim Il Sung from power.

The last Chinese troops would leave North Korea in 1958. This was partly due to cost, though; and unlike the American presence in South Korea, withdrawn Chinese soldiers would always be no more than a stone’s throw from the Amrok should a crisis in Korea rear its head again.

The two countries’ relationship has been described as being as close as “lips and teeth,” even though their differences sometimes mean they’re more like chalk and cheese

Nevertheless, North Korea was left faced with American troops in the South numbering in the tens of thousands — not to mention the atomic weapons introduced to the peninsula in 1957. Additionally, South Korea and the U.S. were bound by a military alliance signed in 1953 in the aftermath of the Korean War.

Until the signing of the Sino-DPRK treaty in 1961, then, North Korea had a three-year security vacuum.

The China-North Korea alliance was realized at this time in no small part because the defense treaty between North Korea and the Soviet Union had been concluded only five days earlier.

Amid friction between China and the Soviet Union (the “Sino-Soviet split”), Beijing and Moscow competed for Pyongyang’s favor – in this context, North Korea skillfully used both superpowers for aid during the Cold War.

When news reached Beijing that Kim was going to sign a defense pact in Moscow, their own visit and treaty for the North Korean leader were speedily arranged.

ALLIANCE COMMITMENTS

Article II of the Sino-DPRK treaty states that “the two signatory nations guarantee to adopt immediately all necessary measures to oppose any country or coalition of countries that might attack either nation.”

The key point here is that China would only come to North Korea’s aid if it came under fire first — in other words, Kim Il Sung would find himself on his own should he repeat the events of June 1950.

The U.S. had also come to a similar arrangement with South Korea in its defense treaty: while the superpowers recognized the strategic importance of their respective ally’s territory, they were disinterested in achieving unification if it meant Korean War II.

Pyongyang’s treaty with Beijing was similar to its treaty with Moscow. There was one important difference, however: the Soviet Union’s pact would be effective for ten years and thereafter subject to renewal every five years, while there was no such specification in the agreement with China.

This was a very public display of Sino-Soviet split one-upmanship. The unspecified time frame has turned into an automatic twenty-year renewal period, though; the treaty has previously been renewed in 1981 and 2001.

POST-COLD WAR SINO-DPRK RELATIONS

The end of the Cold War in the late 1980s coincided with the economic rise of South Korea, culminating in the country’s emergence on the world stage at the 1988 Seoul Olympics — despite the North’s attempts to derail festivities.

Unlike the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, there would be no Cold War-induced boycott of the Games this time around, much to Pyongyang’s ire.

Both China and the Soviet Union attended the Seoul Olympics, and in the following years even established relations with the economically booming South.

Since establishing diplomatic relations with Seoul in 1992, Beijing’s Korea policy hasn’t been as clear-cut as it was in the communism vs capitalism Cold War paradigm.

North Korea’s nuclear program, which came to the world’s attention in the late 1980s/early 1990s, further complicated matters. In Beijing’s eyes, North Korea’s nuclear program has only consistently served to increase the kind of tensions on the peninsula that China has always been keen to avoid.

This post-Cold War nuclear hangover has undermined Chinese enthusiasm for the Sino-DPRK treaty to the present day.

For example, in 2017, a tumultuous year for U.S.-DPRK relations, Chinese-run English-language state media The Global Times published an editorial stating that “as soon as North Korea complies with China’s declared advice and suspends nuclear activities… China will actively work to protect the security of a denuclearised North Korean nation and regime.”

Another editorial acknowledged that “since the treaty was renewed [in 2001], the divergences between China and North Korea over the latter’s nuclear development have sharpened.” It added that Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons had “violated the principles of the treaty.”

If read the other way round, it seems China was implying that they may not come to North Korea’s rescue if it continues its nuclear weapons development.

GOING FORWARD

Following the “fire and fury” U.S.-DPRK tensions of 2017, of course, came the summitry of 2018 and 2019.

China-North Korea relations were swept up by the ever-changing tides of history, too. During these two years, we witnessed five summit meetings between Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping – five more than had taken place from the beginning of Kim’s rule until then. In June 2019, Xi even went to Pyongyang.

These warming ties were reflected during last year’s treaty anniversary. An analysis, carried on the sixth page of the Rodong Sinmun, pointed out that, while “time has passed, and a lot has changed… the truth — that the fate of the people of the DPRK and China are inseparable — remains unchanged.”

This analysis appears to have marked the first time that the party daily has featured a statement on June 11 commemorating the treaty’s anniversary since Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011.

Although a warming Sino-DPRK relationship counters the U.S.-ROK alliance, perhaps, for denuclearization, a stronger Chinese military commitment to North Korea isn’t anything so sinister after all.

As analyst Ankit Panda has suggested, China’s lukewarm support for rogue North Korea may have led the latter’s leadership to lose faith in Chinese support and push harder toward developing reliable nuclear weapons for its own survival instead.

Maybe, then, a healthy military alliance between China and North Korea could help to create more favorable security conditions that incentivize Pyongyang to one day give up those nukes — something all parties involved in the Korean peninsula have been desperately striving for over the last few decades.

Edited by Oliver Hotham