China's North Korea problem is worse than ours

Sean Illing · Thursday, August 10, 2017, 1:55 pm

They’ve got few options, decreasing leverage, and will have to intervene if war breaks out.
China, as North Korea’s strongest ally and biggest trade partner, is a critical element of any possible solution to the North Korea nuclear crisis. But so far it appears unable — or unwilling — to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

To get a better sense of the dynamics at play in this relationship, I spoke with Ely Ratner, an expert on US-China relations and East Asia policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC.

I asked Ratner if the stand-off between the US and North Korea is as much a test for China as it is for Trump, and if he believes China is likely to get involved militarily to defend North Korea if a war breaks out in that country.

He told me that China would prefer that North Korea stop testing missiles and start negotiating with the US but "there's no clear path towards that right now." As a result, China has few good options and its primary concern, increasingly, is preventing war. But should a war erupt in North Korea, China would likely have no choice but to intervene, and the consequences of that would be both grave and unpredictable.

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https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/10/16125076/china-north-korea-donald-trump-xi-jinping-kim-jong-un