Reckless, ungrateful, a security threat: These are not terms that China has traditionally directed at North Korea, but they have become increasingly common in state-run media, suggesting a budding re-think of old ties.
Since North Korea held a second nuclear test on May 25, China has mostly stuck to its customary even-handed rhetoric on the dispute, but its officials, including a senior military officer, have been pointedly open in their worries about their much smaller neighbor.
Bleak commentary on North Korea has also multiplied in the government-controlled press, some of it going well beyond the usual official rhetoric.
“Judging from current trends, I believe a military conflict could well break out on the Korean Peninsula, first at sea and then possibly pushing towards the 38th Parallel,” Zhang Liangui (張蓮桂), a specialist on North Korea at the Central Party School in Beijing, wrote last month in a Chinese-language magazine World Affairs.
Zhang said fresh international sanctions against North Korea are unlikely to work unless backed by the threat of force.
“In North Korea, economic and political sanctions cannot influence the concrete interests of its decision-makers. Only sanctions against North Korea backed by force will get enough attention from it,” he wrote in the magazine, which is sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Such talk may presage a tougher stance toward the hermit state on China’s doorstep, partly narrowing a policy gap with Washington and its allies, several experts said.
Other recent assessments in the Chinese media have branded the six-country nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea — hosted by Beijing but now in the deep freeze — an outright failure.
China’s news media are not always an unfailing mirror of the leadership’s thinking, but the openly worried discussion of the North marks a shift — especially in a year when the two countries are supposed to be celebrating 60 years of official friendship.
For Drew Thompson, an expert at the Nixon Center in Washington who has studied Beijing’s ties with Pyongyang, the overt expression of disenchantment suggests the Chinese government wants to prepare public opinion for harsher policies toward a country long lauded as a plucky communist friend.
“They’re trying to shape elite opinion, so it’s not an unconditional relationship ... What they’re doing is creating options for themselves,” Thompson said of the Chinese leadership.
That said, few expect Beijing to opt for tougher pressure against Pyongyang soon.
China backed a UN resolution condemning the North’s nuclear test and imposing fresh sanctions, but Beijing has long been reluctant to press for more. Last week, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) told a news conference that sanctions should not damage ordinary trade and aid.
Chinese commentators have nonetheless become increasingly blunt in dismissing the six-party talks aimed at eventually ending North Korea’s nuclear arms program.
“Compared with this sense of failure, many Chinese experts and advisers are more concerned with the threat Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons poses to China’s security,” the English-language China Daily said last week.
“Such an attitude on the part of Pyongyang is a warning that China should reconsider its national interests,” it said.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS