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PacNet #55 – China Debates DPRK Policy

Policy toward the DPRK is one of the few foreign affairs issues that has triggered great debate in China. Over the years, China’s policy toward North Korea has been driven by inertia. There was a clear ideological element that regarded the DPRK as a “socialist country.” The Chinese used an idiom “kukou poxin” – basically meaning to urge somebody repeatedly with good intentions – to describe efforts to persuade Pyongyang to constrain itself with respect to nuclear development and to take a new path of reform and opening-up.