China's Stance on North Korea
China successfully test-fired a new type of missile in the Bohai Sea near the Korean peninsula last Tuesday, just hours after Moon Jae-in was elected as the new South Korean president. There has been plenty of speculation about the Asian giant’s motives. According to Michael Hirson, the Asia Director of Eurasia group, this move is an indication that Chinese authorities have begun to “lose their patience with North Korea.” Other military analysts believe the opposite is true, claiming that the missile launch was a direct response to the deployment of the American Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea two months ago.
Hirson’s theory does not seem entirely plausible to me, as I find it hard to believe that China would sever its 60-year ties with North Korea so easily. Indeed, North Korea’s continuation of missile tests serve as more than enough proof that China has yet to place significant pressure on its neighbor. Perhaps I wouldn’t go so far as to call the North Korean dictator a “smart cookie,” but I do believe that despite being a mad and power-hungry tyrant, Kim Jong-un understands China is not an ally he can ever afford to lose or underestimate.
It is not in the nature of any global power to make weighty sacrifices for the betterment of the global community. The only reason why China is in the same boat with the rest of the world when it comes to fearing North Korea’s possession of a potent nuclear arsenal is not necessarily because it would be an immense threat to global security, but because its little political puppet would no longer be so easy to manipulate. At this point, however, China is still refusing to publicly side with the U.S., though I’m sure the country is taking quite a few measures of its own to oppose the North’s nuclear weapon development behind the scenes.
China’s most recent missile launch was absolutely a warning directed towards the U.S. It’s clear that the Chinese government has simply been doing what it does best: stealthily conducting careful analysis of a scene and planning few but very deliberate actions to remind global rivals that it is a force to be reckoned with. Up to this point, China had no reason to object to North Korea stirring up trouble for the U.S. and its allies, but it was recently made wary of inadvertently giving the U.S. justification to exert greater influence in East Asia on the grounds of countering a global security threat. For China, the deployment of the THAAD was one step too far.
It has been a while since President Donald Trump declared North Korea to be a problem that “will be taken care of,” yet it is clear he has made little progress on this issue since the North’s first missile test of the year on Feb. 11. Until he acknowledges that the current conflict with North Korea extends far beyond the borders of the Korean peninsula, tensions in East Asia will only continue to heighten. If the Trump administration does not proceed with more caution in this time of developing crisis, it will soon find the U.S. in confrontation with an opponent much more formidable than North Korea.