CHINA-NORTH KOREA AND THE US

An interesting article published in the New Yorker on September 19, 2017, analysed China's interests in the developments concerning North Korea and the US. Relevant highlights are extracted: "At the center of the North Korean nuclear crisis is a pivotal question: How much is China really willing to pressure and punish its longtime ally in Pyongyang?"  

China doesn’t trust Kim Jong Un—but it trusts Trump even less.

For decades, China backed North Korea in hostilities with the United States. The fellow Communist armies had fought alongside one another in the Korean War, and North Korea still relies on China for as much as ninety per cent of its overseas trade. In Chairman Mao’s analogy, the two nations were as close as “lips and teeth.” But that is no longer true; since taking power, in 2011, Kim Jong Un, who is suspicious of China’s efforts to control North Korea or spur it to follow its model of economic reform, has openly antagonized the government in Beijing, including launching rockets that would embarrass the Chinese leadership. (Earlier this month, Kim fired a rocket just as Xi Jinping, the Chinese President, was opening an annual summit of developing countries in the Chinese city of Xiamen.)

By several measures, Chinese leaders have become more willing to get tough with Kim. In March, Shen Zhihua, one of China’s best-known experts on the Korean War, said, in a speech said, “We must see clearly that China and North Korea are no longer brothers-in-arms, and in the short term there’s no possibility of an improvement in Chinese-North Korean relations.” The speech was circulated widely, without much in the way of official censorship—a sign, to many Chinese analysts, that some of the country’s leaders agree.

In a meeting in August, Shen Zhihua, a scholar who works in a research center at East China Normal University, in Shanghai, said “I think more and more leaders share this view. At a minimum, they think that multiple views should exist.” He believes that long-standing tensions between Beijing and Pyongyang are becoming irreparable: “Officially, they tried to paper over the cracks, but the differences were inevitable.”

 Of North Korea, he said, “I think China doesn’t care who is running the country. Xi and Kim have not met. It used to be a tradition if there is a new leader, to meet him. But not now.” He said some have come to believe what was once anathema—that North Korea could one day turn its aggression on China: “Many in China don’t want North Korea to have nuclear weapons because nuclear weapons are, first, threatening to China.”

Zhao Tong, who specializes in nuclear issues as a Fellow at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, said he broadly agreed with Shen Zhihua's speech, observing that China-North Korea do not share a "warm relationship of ‘brothers.’ ” Zhao Tong ticked off examples of China’s new pressures on Pyongyang: “China has stopped coal imports. That’s a big step. It’s stopped supplying diesel and gas. That’s a big step. It has tightened regulations on companies and financial institutions, and the big ones have stopped doing business with North Korea. It’s the smaller ones that are motivated by narrow interests and are still doing business. China has enhanced inspections of goods at the border. They made efforts to help private-sector companies strengthen their export-control practices.” But, importantly, Zhao Tong added that it would be a mistake to misread those steps as China signing on, wholesale, to American efforts to force North Korea to the edge of collapse—a tactic, favored in Washington, known as “strategic strangulation.” “No, it’s just balancing Trump and Kim Jong Un,” Zhao said. “The reason China agreed to much tougher sanctions is to calm Trump down.” China has strategic tensions of its own with the U.S., so it is keeping both countries off balance. “It’s basically, ‘Who is the bigger evil?’ For China, the U.S. is always the top geostrategic concern, the top threat. He said  “I think some Chinese are secretly hoping the North Korean position can actually help drive the U.S. forces away from the Korean Peninsula. It is in China’s interest if, in the mid-to-long term, the North Koreans can have a deal with the United States where the U.S. reduces troops or reduces its exercises.”

In recent years, in private meetings with President Obama, and later with President Trump, Xi Jinping has repeated a bottom-line principle about North Korea: “No war. No chaos. No nukes.” Zhao Tong clarified that "no nukes" is third in the list of three strategic priorities with the first two being "avoiding war on the Korean Peninsula, and avoiding chaos and collapse.” In that spirit, China has sought to limit the scope of U.S.-backed sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. 

Nothing worries Chinese officials more than the following scenario: the U.S. uses harsh sanctions and covert action—and possibly military strikes—to drive North Korea close to the point of regime collapse. He disclosed that Xi Jinping, in separate sessions, has offered Obama and Trump the Chinese adage in reference to North Korea: “When a man is barefoot, he doesn’t fear a man with shoes.” In other words, even if attacking America would be suicide for North Korea, if it sees nothing left to lose, it just might do the unthinkable. For that reason, China, above all, wants the U.S. to avoid backing Kim into a corner from which he has no exit.








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