The US and South Korea on Thursday called on China to use its influence over Russia and North Korea to prevent escalation after Pyongyang sent thousands of troops to Russia to aid Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
In a meeting earlier this week, three top US diplomats met with China’s ambassador to the US to emphasize Washington’s concerns and urge China to use its sway with North Korea to try to curtail the cooperation, said a US Department of State official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said that the sides had “a robust conversation just this week” and that China knows US expectations are that “they’ll use the influence that they have to work to curb these activities.”
Photo: AFP
However, “I think this is a demand signal that’s coming not just from us, but from countries around the world,” Blinken told a news conference in Washington alongside US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and their South Korean counterparts.
Liu Pengyu (劉鵬宇), spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said in a statement that China’s position on the Ukraine crisis is “consistent and clear.”
China strives “for peace talks and political settlement of the Ukraine crisis. This position remains unchanged. China will continue to play a constructive role to this end,” Liu said.
The US says that 8,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia near Ukraine’s border and are preparing to help the Kremlin fight against Ukrainian troops in the coming days.
China has yet to publicly comment on the move.
Austin said China “should be asking Russia some hard questions at this point and whether it intends to broaden this conflict by this kind of behavior.”
Beijing has forged a “no limits” partnership with Moscow, and while it has also been a major ally for Pyongyang, experts say Beijing might not approve of the closer military partnership between Russia and North Korea because it sees it as destabilizing in the region.
The Russia-North Korea partnership runs contrary to Beijing’s goal for a peaceful Korean Peninsula, said Shi Yinhong (時殷弘), an international relations expert at Renmin University in Beijing.
The Chinese government is “aware of the complexity and danger of the situation,” Shi said, adding that the “fact that China hasn’t said anything yet on the military alliance agreement between North Korea and Russia indicates that China strongly disagrees with it.”
Dennis Wilder, senior fellow for the Initiative for US-China Dialogue on global issues at Georgetown University, called Beijing’s “radio silence” on North Korea’s move “staggering.”
Beijing must find a balance between supporting Moscow and not angering the West, Wilder said, adding that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) might “for his own sake ignore the whole thing.”
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