`China has no intention to rein in North Korea'

By Kim Jae-kyoung

China will continue to pamper North Korea, providing the Kim Jong-un regime a lifeline despite rising international pressure, North Korea experts said Tuesday.

They stressed that the United States and South Korea had better not place high hopes on China because it won't move unless North Korea's actions directly threaten Chinese security or economic interests.

Simply speaking, China does not want to jeopardize the status quo on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia so it won't change its contradictory policy over the North's provocations and the U.S. deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense unit in the South.

This indicates that Beijing will continue its focus on balancing U.S. pressure to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear development with its domestic interest in ensuring border stability and preventing chaos within North Korea.

"Of course China continues to support North Korea, both formally, and informally," Balbina Hwang, a visiting professor at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies, told The Korea Times. Hwang served as special adviser on East Asian affairs in the George W. Bush administration.

She does not consider China's attitude "ambivalent," saying that the latest actions by China on THAAD clearly suggest that it has no intention of using whatever leverage it has over North Korea.

"China's harsh and aggressive stance toward South Korea about THAAD is clear evidence that Beijing will not take the necessary actions to denuclearize North Korea because, ultimately, it is not China's priority goal," she said.

"More important than the North's denuclearization is China's desire to maintain stability in Northeast Asia and to limit U.S. influence in the Asia region," she added.

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The analysis came after China fired back at U.S. President Donald Trump over North Korea, Monday, saying that China is not the one that caused the North Korean issue. It called for all parties to work together to seek a resolution.

China's Foreign Ministry responded to a critical tweet from Trump who said, "I am very disappointed in China. Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet they do nothing for us with North Korea, just talk."

Trump criticized China after Pyongyang launched its latest test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the U.S. mainland, Friday. The test prompted President Moon Jae-in to order the deployment of four additional THAAD launchers.

Analysts said that Beijing must be unhappy about Pyongyang's continuing provocations, but it might care more about securing stability in North Korea and maintaining stability in the northeast China border region with North Korea.

They expect that though China formally agreed to support U.S.-led economic sanctions, it is unlikely that China will take any actions that could make the North behave.

"Despite the economic benefits China derives from trade and investment relations with South Korea, they do not trump China's priority of having a buffer state in North Korea," said Tara O, adjunct fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS.

O, author of "Collapse of North Korea: Challenges, Planning and Geopolitics of Korean Unification," believes that China wants to keep a system of freedom and democracy far from its borders.

"China is afraid of potential irredentism from ethnic Koreans in northeast China, which would have repercussions elsewhere, such as Tibet and Xinjiang, and even Hong Kong," she said.

"So China will continue supporting the Kim Jong-un regime until it feels the cost China bears is heavier than it's worth or there is a better option," she added.

Following harsher sanctions by the U.S. and its allies, Chinese and North Korean traders have made bilateral trade more sophisticated and less traceable by increasing cash-only transactions.

The majority of the entities helping North Korea evade the sanctions are in China, according to the analysts.