China builds up troop levels, ouposts on N. Korean border.

I missed this one last week. The article postulates that China is expecting a flood of starving people crossing the border in search of food. I'm inclined to agree. A flood of refugees is usually a sign of a state's imminent collapse.

China, as noted, does not want the DPRK to collapse as it would inevitably end up like a re-uninfied Germany. That's a long border to secure. The manpower and cost to keep an eye on a unified Korea would be problematic. Further, it would likely be much more hospitable to the US and it's allies. Additionally, I'll wager that the DPRK's archives have a lot of secrets the Chinese would like to see buried forever. How much assistance did the DPRK get for it's nuclear and missile programs? How much did China know about their counterfeiting efforts or their drug trading?

US experts and observers (esp. those on the right) have been predicting the DPRK's imminent collapse for decades. I don't subscribe to that view. Cuba has been able to limp along for 50 years. Granted they have the Spanish and the Canadians to give their hard currency while vacationing on Havana's sunny shores. The DPRK has zero hope of ever attracting anyone aside from the South Koreans looking for family members or the odd person who wants to go through the looking glass to see what a strange place it is. That loss is offset by their counterfeiting, drug and missile sales. If any of those takes a hit, they're likely to be in dire straits pretty quickly.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

So....the autism thing

For Gerard