Why China’s President and Kim Jong-un Aren’t Revealing Whatever They Said About Nukes at Pyongyang

The euphoric tone of Communist China’s President Xi Jinping and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un during two days of summitry in Pyongyang this week is masking the entire issue of North Korea’s nuclear program.While they scrupulously avoid the topic for public consumption, Mr. Xi has left the impression he accepts North Korea’s emergence as the world’s ninth nuclear power.“It cannot have escaped Chinese leadership that North Korea’s nuclear capabilities can target the entirety of their country,” the long-time author and expert on China and North Korea at the American Enterprise Institute, Nicholas Eberstadt, tells The New York Sun. “Beijing’s approach is to accept North Korea’s WMD (weapons of mass destruction) brinkmanship so long as it causes more difficulty for the U.S.”While that’s “risky,” Mr. Eberstadt notes, Mr. Xi is gambling that he’s got more to gain by effusively siding with North Korea. “Given the realities of geography,” North Korea’s proximity to China, “it’s like having Joey Gallo in the apartment next-door — except Joey is armed with nuclear weapons”.In the great power game vis-a-vis Russia, Mr. Kim has formed a tight alliance by sending arms and men to support its war against Ukraine. Many analysts, in response to the Sun’s questions, believe he and Mr. Xi could not have avoided the elephant in the room.“Did they talk about nukes,” asks a retired special forces colonel, now with the Federation for Defense of Democracies, David Maxwell. “Almost certainly, yes,” he answers. At the least, Colonel Maxswell, who served five tours in South Korea, believes Mr. Xi gave Mr. Kim “strategic cover, not strategic restraint.“ Indeed, “the public silence on nuclear weapons was the message.”Mr. Xi’s acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear power, whether explicitly or implicitly, begs the question of whether he suggested that Mr. Kim invite President Trump, whom he saw for the first time in Singapore eight years ago this month, for their fourth summit.The State Department, responding to South Korea’s Yonhap News, noted that Messrs. Trump and Xi, at Beijing last month, “confirmed their shared goal to denuclearize North Korea.” China has “long grappled with the contradiction inherent in its North Korea policy,” a former senior American diplomat in Korea, Evans Revere, tells The Sun. “On the one hand, a nuclear-armed North Korea advances China’s interests by posing a credible threat to the United States and its East Asian allies, South Korea, and Japan.”But then, “a nuclear North Korea fuels Beijing’s worst nightmare,” he notes. “China’s nuclear-armed ally” could draw the Chinese “into a nightmarish armed conflict on China’s northeast border.” Chinese policy, he adds, has long been to encourage Pyongyang “to exercise restraint,”North Korea, the day before Mr. Xi’s arrival, “bluntly re-stated that denuclearization is dead,” says Mr. Evans. “This message was nominally directed at the U.S. and South Korea, but the fact is that it was mainly intended for China.”Regardless, Mr. Evans believes that Mr. Xi “probably raised with the North Korean leader China’s support for dialogue aimed at reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula.” China’s statement that relations with North Korea “are at a new, historical starting point strongly suggests China is now prepared to deal with the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) as a de facto nuclear state.”All of which leaves some analysts believing such topics as North Korea’s nukes and another Trump-Kim summit ranked low on the Xi-Kim agenda.“China isn’t likely to have pressed North Korea on its nuclear program,” says Bruce Klingner, a former CIA and think tank expert on the North. ”Beijing has publicly called for the U.S. to address Pyongyang’s ‘legitimate security concerns’ and been “more obstructionist in the UN Security Council against efforts to punish North Korea for its nuclear and missile programs.” Beijing “may not condone Pyongyang’s nuclear program and provocative behavior,” he says, but “will not punish Pyongyang.”If Mr. Xi passed along Mr. Trump’s desire to meet Mr. Kim again, it was “without pressuring” him. says Mr. Klingner, North Korea “will remain reluctant,” he adds. “The regime is in a far stronger position than during Trump’s first term. Pyongyang has gained $14 billion in benefits from Moscow for providing military assistance, and its trade with China has returned to pre-Covid levels.”.Another former senior American diplomat in Seoul, Mark Fitzpatrick, believes, “If Kim didn’t want to talk about nukes other than being recognized as having them and Xi didn’t want to change China’s stated policy, then it’s fair to assume the subject was left off the agenda.” Mr. Xi “has no interest in advancing Trump’s agenda,” Mr. Fitzpatrick says, “If they talked about Trump, it was probably to share derogatory impressions.”

Why China’s President and Kim Jong-un Aren’t Revealing Whatever They Said About Nukes at Pyongyang

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