Our eye was caught by this paragraph from Xinhua‘s report on the meeting between President Hu Jintao and Choe Thae Bok, the high-ranking leader of the delegation North Korea sent to brief Hu on the Workers’ Party of Korea’s conference earlier this week that got underway the dynastic leadership succession in Pyongyang:
“General Secretary Kim Jong Il decided to send a senior delegation to China just after the conclusion of the conference. It shows the importance the DPRK attaches to the consensus reached by leaders of the two countries.”
More evidence, to our minds, that it is China that is orchestrating the succession.
Or perhaps evidence that Kim Jong-il WANTS China to orchestrate it, to ensure Kim Jong-un succeds him as planned?
That would be part of the deal. Kim gets his dynastic succession; China gets a stable neighbour that starts to wean itself from juche and becomes something that looks like a state that is part of the rest of the world even if it is actually part of greater China. — CB.
China is only orchestrating the succession to the extent that it is providing backing to Kim Jong-un: there’s no reason why other contenders for the ‘throne’ have to act according to Beijing’s wishes…hence why this ‘succession’ in North Korea will be much less certain than the previous one.