Ties that bind: Geopolitics, not socialism, underpin North Korea-China alliance

Analysis

Ties that bind: Geopolitics, not socialism, underpin North Korea-China alliance

Strategic cooperation against the democratic world links traditional allies as they prepare to reaffirm 1961 treaty

Jagannath P. Panda June 30, 2021

Ties that bind: Geopolitics, not socialism, underpin North Korea-China alliance

KCNA | North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping during their June 2019 summit in Pyongyang

The relationship between the “hermit kingdom” of North Korea and economic giant China continues to be difficult to comprehend. Though their alliance goes back decades, tensions over the past few years have rebranded them more as “bitter allies” than traditional friends.

Next month, however, the two countries are set to reaffirm their Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, signed on July 11, 1961 and renewed every 20 years since. The military and security alliance outlined under Article II of the treaty has made their relationship a defining one for regional security.

About the Author

Jagannath P. Panda

Dr. Jagannath Panda is the Head of the Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs (SCSA-IPA) at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), Sweden. He is also the Director for Europe-Asia Research Cooperation at the YCAPS, Senior Fellow at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS), The Hague; and an International Research Fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS) in Japan. Dr. Panda is the Series Editor for Routledge Studies on Think Asia and author of the book India-China Relations (Routledge: 2017) and China’s Path to Power: Party, Military and the Politics of State Transition (Pentagon Press: 2010). His recent work includes Quad Plus and Indo-Pacific (Routledge: 2021); Scaling India-Japan Cooperation in Indo-Pacific and Beyond 2025 (KW Publishing Ltd. 2019), and The Korean Peninsula and Indo-Pacific Power Politics: Status Security at Stake (Routledge, 2020).

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