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We are always interested in approaches to North Korea that involve new data and analysis, and former Washington Post reporter and Asia hand Keith Richburg has done that at the Nikkei Asian Review. With assistance from Ryanne Hsu, a graduate student at the University of Hong Kong, Richburg scraped Weibo for chatter on North Korea around the time of the fourth nuclear test. The two graphs show the speed with which the public responded on an hour-by-hour basis as well as the larger surge around the test.
Analyzing these posts not only reveals overall sentiment—overwhelmingly negative—but provides insight into the reasoning that drives public opinion as well. Among the dominant tropes is that China is aiding and abetting the Kims:
"凤凰网报道：朝鲜扣押29名中国渔民 索120万赎金！交这样的流氓老朋友有什么意义？"
"What’s the point of making friends with a hooligan?"
"养虎为患，助纣为虐！ //@财经网:【大家都很关心朝鲜】美国地质勘探局网站测定，北京时间今晨9点30分，朝鲜西北部发生5.1级地震，震源深度10公里。韩国气象部门则称朝鲜此地震为“人为”。"
"(China’s policy toward NK is like) helping villains and breeding evil."
But more challenging to Beijing is that North Korea is not simply acting out but is simultaneously doing China direct harm and the government has not been tough enough. A number of the posts make reference to an earlier incident in which North Korea held a group of Chinese fisherman hostage, abusing them while in captivity and effectively demanding ransom:
"软弱无能的中国外交！每年花纳税人的钱，有几亿美金吧，白白送给朝鲜，他们的金二政权却跟海盗一样，抓了我们的渔民要赎金！"
"China’s foreign policy toward North Korea is too weak and incompetent. The Chinese government wasted hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, while Kim Jong-un’s government acted like pirates and held our fishermen for money!
But more risky for Beijing still is the fact that a number of posts highlight the gulf between the leadership and the public, and that China’s calls for restraint constitutes a betrayal of the national interest:
"此次朝鲜劫持中国渔民，如是朝鲜官方所为，中国政府不教训一下朝鲜，无以取信于民！"
"If it is the NK officials that are behind the kidnapping, the Chinese government will lose the people’s trust for not punishing NK."
"中国民众对朝鲜的态度，与高层似有如鸭绿江之宽的差距？"
"The gap between the attitudes of the general public and that of the top leaders towards North Korea is as wide as the Yalu River."
But our favorite were of the “pox on both their houses” variety, in which the two regimes were compared, however loosely:
"这两个国家很有意思，朝鲜要把日历上的日子全变成金家纪念日，中国则要把所有月日都变成敏感词。"
"These two countries are interesting. North Korea wants to mark everyday on their calendar as the Kims’ anniversaries, while China wants to mark everyday as a censored word."
The US and its Asian allies are increasingly concerned about how public nationalism of the CCP’s own making could push the country into a more assertive posture in the region. In the case of North Korea, however, such assertiveness would actually align China’s policy more closely with the US and South Korea; in this case, we hope that Beijing is listening to rather than just censoring the chatter.
