[As much as Mr. Xi disapproves of North Korea’s nuclear program, he fears even more the end of Mr. Kim’s regime, a unified Korea with American troops on his border and a flood of refugees from the North into China. And despite North Korea’s missile advancement on Tuesday, Mr. Xi still has some breathing room, Chinese military and strategic experts said.]
By Jane Perlez
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President
Xi Jinping of China in Hong Kong in June. As much as Mr. Xi disapproves
of
North Korea’s nuclear program, he fears even more the end of Kim Jong-un’s
regime
and the possibility of a unified Korea with American troops on his
border,
as well as a flood of refugees from the North into China.
Credit
Dale De La Rey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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BEIJING
— Xi Jinping, China’s
leader, is known as the Chairman of Everything. He makes decisions daily on the
economy, the military, foreign policy, human rights and more.
Yet on North Korea he is stuck. A strongman
who usually acts with precision and boldness, Mr. Xi has been reluctant to take
on the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, ostensibly a Chinese ally, whom he
privately disparages to Western leaders as young and reckless.
The July 4 test of the North’s first
intercontinental ballistic missile has raised the question of what is China’s
red line for its ally, and whether the test will force Mr. Xi to act decisively
against North Korea as the Trump administration is asking him to do.
The answer? He will probably do little, if
anything.
As much as Mr. Xi disapproves of North
Korea’s nuclear program, he fears even more the end of Mr. Kim’s regime, a
unified Korea with American troops on his border and a flood of refugees from
the North into China. And despite North Korea’s missile advancement on Tuesday,
Mr. Xi still has some breathing room, Chinese military and strategic experts
said.
Chinese military experts are assessing the
launch more conservatively than their American counterparts, saying they were
not convinced the missile was actually an intercontinental ballistic missile.
“This test may or may not be an ICBM,” said
Wu Riqiang, associate professor of international affairs at Renmin University.
He said the missile was “probably unable to hit Alaska.”
In contrast, American experts said the North
Koreans had crossed a threshold, if only just, with a missile that appeared
able to reach Alaska. While the missile traveled only about 580 miles, it did
so by reaching 1,700 miles into space and re-entering the atmosphere, North
Korean, South Korean and Japanese officials said.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry suggested on
Wednesday that the North’s missile had the potential to reach Hawaii, about
4,780 miles from Kusong, the North Korean town from where the missile was
fired, and farther than Alaska.
On Wednesday, the top American general in
South Korea, Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, said that self-restraint was all that kept
the United States and South Korea from going to war with the North.
Mr. Wu said the North’s long-range missile
capabilities were less threatening to China than to the United States. China
would be more concerned if the North had tested a short- or medium-range
ballistic missile, he said.
China has always considered itself to be less
threatened by North Korean nuclear capabilities than the United States, but it
does fear American countermeasures, like its recent deployment of an
antimissile system on South Korean soil to deal with the threat from the North.
South Korea’s new president, Moon Jae-in, recently suspended deployment of that
system, and there was no sign after the North’s missile launch that he was
changing that position.
China may be increasingly frustrated by the
North’s behavior, but it has never been the target of Mr. Kim’s weapons. The
United States is the North’s declared enemy and the ultimate target of its
nuclear arsenal.
More worrisome to China than the missile
advances was the prospect of North Korea’s test of a sixth nuclear bomb, Mr. Wu
and other experts said. China’s northeast, a depressed area of smaller cities
and rusted industries, runs along the border with North Korea, not far from the
tests. The nuclear testing site at Punggye-ri in North Korea is so close to the
Chinese border that residents in the city of Yanji have complained that their
windows rattled during the last several tests.
When the North tested a nuclear weapon in
September 2016, local residents said they were afraid of large-scale leaks of
radioactive material. Some said they were concerned that the North may actually
use the bomb against China. There have been fears in the last few years of soil
contamination in the northeast from the North’s nuclear testing.
“For China, a sixth nuclear test represents a
graver threat than an ICBM test,” said Feng Zhang, a fellow in political
science at the Australian National University. “North Korea’s ICBMs threaten
the U.S. more than China, but North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the testing of
them near the Chinese border are a strategic and environmental threat to
China.”
Mr. Wu said, “The missile launch just isn’t
as pressing for China as a nuclear test might be.”
But no matter the North’s behavior, it would
be very difficult for Mr. Xi to declare a red line with Pyongyang, either
officially or unofficially, said Cheng Xiaohe, associate professor of
international relations at Renmin University.
“The ICBM is not a Chinese red line — even
the U.S. does not draw that line clearly and unequivocally,” Mr. Cheng said. If
China did draw such a red line, he said, “China or the U.S. must automatically
take retaliatory actions,” such as Beijing cutting off oil supplies to North
Korea.
But China cannot afford to squeeze the North
so hard — by cutting off fuel, for example, or basic trade — that the country
destabilizes, sending refugees pouring over the border.
Mr. Xi is at least publicly expressing
disapproval of North Korea’s latest actions. He was in Russia visiting
President Vladimir V. Putin when the North announced it had successfully tested
an ICBM. The two leaders issued a joint statement calling for negotiations that
would aim to freeze the North’s arsenal in exchange for limitations on the
American military posture in South Korea.
Instead of penalizing North Korea, China has
been calling for such negotiations for many months, but the Trump
administration has declined.
Beyond cracking down on trade between the two
nations, Mr. Xi holds very few cards against North Korea, and he has little
choice but to rely on a kind of strategic hesitation, said a Chinese analyst of
foreign affairs who sometimes advises the government.
“Xi as a strategist is facing an anguished
choice to use up his means on Kim Jong-un while having no confidence at all
that it would be effective,” said the analyst, Shi Yinhong, a professor of
international relations at Renmin University. “What can this strategist do? A
sort of hesitation is unavoidable.”
Mr. Xi is facing an increasingly “determined
and decisive” Mr. Kim, and he is also confronted by an American president who
is not easy to deal with, Mr. Shi said. “Xi and Trump are unable to see eye to
eye for long, and even if they were it would extremely difficult to thwart Kim
for long,” he said.
In Washington, Mr. Trump repeated his
impatience with Mr. Xi. In a post on Twitter on Wednesday, the president said China’s
trade with North Korea had grown by almost 40 percent in the first quarter. “So
much for China working with us — but we had to give it a try,” he said.
It was not clear where Mr. Trump got his 40
percent figure. A South Korean trade group said on Monday that China had
imported much more iron in the last few months than previously. But the group
also said that the North was a long way from making up the lost revenues from
China shutting down its North Korean coal imports.
China’s trade with the North grew 37.4
percent during the first three months of the year, compared with the same
period in 2016, Chinese trade data released in April showed. China said the
trade grew even as it stopped buying North Korean coal.
Ye Fei contributed research from Beijing.