Both sides have largely unrealist expectations of each other, but at least they are talking
Xi Jinping’s meeting with America’s volatile new president promises some measure of clarity as to how the North Korean issue will play out between Beijing and Washington in the coming years. By now, most readers will have formed strong views about US threats of a pre-emptive strike on North Korea, or the unavoidable controversy over the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system and its attendant strategic and commercial anxieties. But less clear than either of these rather binary debates are questions of how the United States will seek to push Chinese sanctions enforcement and trade with North Korea. How far will Trump’s government tighten the screws against China in retaliation for perceived sanctions violations or questionable transactions with North Korea by Chinese firms? Trump’s unusually arrogant, thrusting approach to just about everything he does naturally attracts attention. (Consider the fact that making Xi wait one hour for him to arrive from Washington was probably not the most offensive thing he did on Thursday). When it comes to North Korea policy, Trump was true to form, making headlines in a interview whose rough words for China were probably more reflective of Trump’s poor preparation and incontinent approach to briefing data than a finely honed new US approach to the related issues. Fortunately for everyone, there is more to life than Donald Trump’s mouth or his Twitter account, and the executive branch is but one significant player when it comes to the implementation of North Korea and China policy. Even without a great deal of input from a shrunken State Department, there are other places to look for clues. For these reasons, what has been happening in the halls of Congress with respect to Sino-North Korean relations is potentially more significant than Trump’s mostly content-free bluster. The Republican majority in the US House of Representatives has been problematic for Donald Trump with respect to his health care legislation, but has not resisted the President on foreign policy, even amid an ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The Republicans in the House have not appeared prone to rebel against Trump’s perceived mandate to recalibrate the US relationship with China, and if anything, appear prone to pushing for an even tougher approach. The new Congress has been quite swift in developing tougher approaches to Chinese trade with North Korea.
