Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
Korea is a different situation than Tibet, though. China hasn't been into imperialism or expansion except when it comes to "re-unifying" territories that it considers to historically be part of China (e.g. Tibet, Taiwan, etc.). Korea doesn't fit that description.
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I think that they would make an exception with North Korea if they had to. The preferance would be to keep North Korea as a buffer state.
If the balloon ever went up they would gain a great deal of international positivity if they knocked over the current regime, seized and destroyed the nuclear weapons program under international supervision and shipped in mass quantities of food aid, and then put a China friendly regime in place and withdrew their troops.
Contrary to popular belief the current relations between China and North Korea could be classed as barely correct at the high end and extremely cold at the low end. China hasn't had the same mass influence in North Korea that they had with Kim Il-Sung once his son took power and decided to chart his own nations course.
In fact China views North Korea's Dynastic succession version of Communism as a grotesque creation.
China has been forced to play the game with North Korea in order to keep that buffer zone against the West.
If North Korea did jump in to stop a war physically you could expect to see the whole Kim family tried in a People's revolutionary court and probably imprisoned or shot. The General Staff and most of the senior officers would be sacked as would the internal intelligence and police organs.
China would rea-arm and retrain the North Korea army as well in exchange for North Korea's massive mineral wealth and mining access to it.