No Vietnam in Korea: China’s Cold War strategy and Sino-DPRK relations, 1978-1991

Between 1978 and 1991, the alliance between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) crumbled, but the process was not linear. Sino-DPRK relations improved dramatically from the late 1970s to the early 1980s due to Deng Xiaoping’s strategic thinking. While siding with Washington against Moscow, Beijing strove to keep the DPRK from becoming a second Vietnam, a Soviet client that would pose security threat to the PRC. When the Cold War began to unwind in the mid-1980s, however, Beijing and Pyongyang found themselves drifting apart, leading to the collapse of the Sino-DPRK alliance.