By Jin Kai
The coldness in China-North Korea relations is more “normal” than their previous close relationship.
It has been three and half years since North Korean leader Kim Jong-un rose to power, a period that has seen a chill in the China-North Korea relationship.
However, the current estrangement between China and North Korea may be the new normal, rather than an abnormality. Over the previous decades, the superficial affinity between these two neighbors made for a fruitful bilateral relationship, but ties remained frail and complicated by regional and global politics. That more positive relationship was understandable, but not quite normal.
During the heyday of the Cold War, Pyongyang fully mobilized its delicate (and successful) strategy of diplomatic maneuvering between the former Soviet Union and China in the Mao Zedong era. North Korea’s alliance treaties with both Moscow and Beijing are proof of this. In general, this period saw a triangle formed by China, North Korea, and the Soviet Union — sometimes an equilateral one, but quite often leaving one leg of the triangle shorter than the other. By following the changing political climates between its bigger and stronger neighbors, North Korea successfully secured national strategic gains, including political support, economic aid, and military protection, through a number of means from both China and former Soviet Union.
Read the full story at The Diplomat