The U. S. and its allies in Asia shouldn’t assume China will fully cooperate with the campaign to curtail North Korea’s nuclear arms program, a top priority of President Donald Trump, according to the annual report of a bipartisan congressional panel.
The U. S. and its allies in Asia shouldn’t assume China will fully cooperate with the campaign to curtail North Korea’s nuclear arms program, a top priority of President Donald Trump, according to the annual report of a bipartisan congressional panel.
Despite concerns over North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile programs, China remains the country’s largest trading partner and differs with the U. S. over the best way to handle Kim Jong Un’s reclusive regime, the U. S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in the report published Wednesday.
“The United States and the international community should keep their expectations low,” according to the report, “given China’s lackluster record of previous sanctions enforcement and continued sanctions violations by Chinese companies exporting dual-use items to North Korea.”
China faces a dilemma enforcing sanctions “in wanting to see some reform in the North Korean economy and not wanting to see a collapse,” panel commissioner Larry Wortzel told reporters before the report’s release. “We think their cooperation and exercise of sanctions will be fairly limited” by “what they see as their own national interest.”
Created by Congress in 2000, the commission has reported on China’s economic and military rise, usually in critical assessments accompanied by recommendations for counter-actions such as trade sanctions.
This year, the panel flagged what it said are increasing efforts by Chinese companies to invest in sensitive or strategic U. S. industries in ways that avoids close oversight, such as by creating shell companies based outside China. That’s making it harder for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, to review the threat they could pose to national security, the report said.
