China yesterday dispatched a special envoy to North Korea, a trip hailed as a “big move” by US President Donald Trump, who has urged Beijing to pile pressure on its nuclear-armed ally.
Diplomat Song Tao (宋濤) was traveling to the North on behalf of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to brief officials on the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th National Congress and other “issues of mutual interest,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) said.
Analysts expect Song to address the nuclear standoff, which has roiled relations between the two Cold War-era allies as China has backed UN sanctions on North Korea over its missile tests and a sixth nuclear blast.
Photo: AP
Trump, who warned Xi during his trip to Beijing last week that time was “quickly running out” to solve the nuclear crisis, took to Twitter on Thursday to hail the mission as “a big move, we’ll see what happens!”
The US leader wants China, which accounts for 90 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade, to put more economic pressure on the reclusive regime, but experts doubt Song’s visit would yield major breakthroughs.
“China has virtually no political influence on North Korea. Its influence is derived from economic leverage,” said Bonnie Glaser, China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Relations are extremely stressed. Perhaps the lowest point since the Korean War. Perhaps [the mission] will put a floor under China-North Korea relations, preventing further deterioration.”
China has imposed banking restrictions on North Koreans in addition to enacting a series of UN measures, but Beijing fears that squeezing Pyongyang too hard would cause the regime’s collapse.
Song is the first Chinese envoy to make an official trip to North Korea since October last year, when Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Liu Zhenmin (劉振民) visited.
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