Date: November 27, 2025, 14:00–15:00 (CET)
The webinar explores how Chinese elites, both current professionals and future decision-makers, perceive North Korea and China’s policy toward the Korean Peninsula using interviews and survey data. It finds that China’s long-standing “stability-first” doctrine of no war, no chaos, no nukes still guides both generations, who see preserving the status quo as essential to border stability. Younger elites show less cultural affinity for Pyongyang and greater openness toward Seoul, yet both view denuclearization as unrealistic and favor crisis management over coercion. Growing concern about North Korea’s military ties with Russia highlights China’s paradox of dependence without control and the persistence of policy continuity amid evolving motives.
Jinwan Park is a Nonresident Fellow at the European Centre for North Korean Studies and a columnist for The Korea Times. His writings on Northeast Asian affairs have appeared in outlets including The Hill, Nikkei Asia, and SCMP, as well as in think tank publications such as the Council on Foreign Relations, 38 North, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Korea Economic Institute. He earned his master's degree from Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar and holds a bachelor's from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is also co-founder of the U.S.-ROK-Japan Trilateral Next-Gen Study Group, a network of young professionals promoting dialogue and cooperation among the three countries.
Join us via Zoom: https://univienna.zoom.us/j/68016761250?pwd=kgbN46exXnxrnR6iM0bwyf3VVXmyZi.1