China, which sells billions in fuel and food to North Korea, is far better positioned than the U. S. to weaken its volatile neighbor without firing a single missile.
President Donald Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” over its nuclear threat, but China, which sells billions in fuel and food to North Korea, is far better positioned to weaken its volatile neighbor without firing a single missile.
Even as a global nuclear crisis heats up, there’s scant evidence China is willing to impose the major economic measures necessary to cripple Pyongyang — despite Trump’s insistence Thursday that “it do a lot more.”
“China is not willing to put the kind of regime threat pressure that we think is necessary because they don’ t want to cause a Korean collapse, ” said Joseph DeThomas, a former U. S. diplomat who specialized in sanctions and nonproliferation issues.
The prospect of millions of refugees pouring into China, economic instability in its northern provinces and a possible war on the Korean peninsula are more pressing realities for Beijing than North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons.
China agreed this week to a United Nations resolution prohibiting the purchase of some of North Korea’s major exports — coal, iron ore, seafood and other items. Yet the legitimate and illicit trade that flows back and forth across the Yalu River every day is a stark reminder that China’s view of the problem differs greatly from the U. S.
“I think they’ re genuinely unhappy with the North Koreans, genuinely want to penalize them and are prepared to join with the U. S. in doing that — but there’s a limit to how far they want to go, ” said Robert Einhorn, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who previously served as special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control at the State Department.
Trump showed impatience with such limits, however, in remarks from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
“We lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year on trade with China, ” he said. “They know how I feel. It’s not going to continue like that. But if China helps us, I feel a lot differently toward trade, a lot differently toward trade.”
The president has threatened tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports and has come close to ordering an investigation into Beijing’s intellectual property rights violations that could lead to more trade restrictions. However, the latest trade action alleged violations of U. S. intellectual property rights and forced technology transfers against China’s was put off as the U. S. recently sought China’s support for sanctions at the U. N.
But Beijing would be hard pressed to curtail its exports of oil, vehicles, electronics and food that serve to prop up the North Korean economy, and by extension, the Kim Jong Un regime and its nuclear aspirations.
“China is sort of there everywhere economically for North Korea, ” said DeThomas. “They’ re on the one hand the key and the other hand the lock.”
Although North Korea has become an increasingly ostracized nation over the years, China’s support for the regime through trade remains strong.
