Now this is some big news

China "backs Korean unification"

It was always assumed that the Chinese would be very unhappy at the prospects of united Korean peninsula. (This would of course be a Korea united under the government of the South). The main reason for China to oppose such an outcome was that it would place US troops (the United States has some 30,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea) across the Yalu river from China. Al Jazeera reports on findings from Wikileaks:

The latest documents released by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks on Tuesday detail conversations between US officials and Chinese diplomats, as well as a senior South Korean official's discussion with his Chinese counterparts.

Cheng Guoping, the Chinese ambassador to Kazakhstan, was reported to have told Richard Hoagland, the US ambassador, that "China hopes for peaceful reunification in the long-term, but he expects the two countries to remain separate in the short-term".
The remarks were made during a three-hour dinner in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, in June 2009, according to documents published on WikiLeaks website.

Cheng was quoted as telling Hoagland that China's objectives in North Korea were to ensure they honour their commitments on non-proliferation, maintain stability, and "don’t drive [Kim Jong-il] mad".

If the United States knew about this, and they did, since this came from a conversation between a Chinese and an American Diplomat, then this may shed some light on the Unities States' attitude and position towards China vis-a-vis North Korea. If the United States knew that China did ultimately accept a united Korea, something that the United States ostensibly also desires, then it would make sense that American officials would be constantly pressuring China to take a harder stand towards North Korea. America's appeals to China had seemed so futile, before this was leaked, since most people had assumed that China would never cave and wouldn't change its mind. Perhaps this shows that, with respect towards North Korea, China is still very realpolitik-minded. 


Of course it also demonstrates the gap between the ruling Chinese Communist Party's attitude towards N. Korea and the Chinese peoples'. Most Chinese people are still taught in school that the United States and South Korea viciously attacked North Korea and that a heroic China came to its little brother's defence. The truth is that North Korea attacked South Korea and that both America (and the United Nations) and China were dragged into the conflict more out of their own fears of each other and the unknown than anything else. 


Let us hope that this still very dangerous spot on Earth can be made a lot less dangerous for the people living there and for all the rest of us too.