Is China Undermining Efforts to Disarm North Korea? Not Yet, Analysts Say

BEIJING — When President Donald Trump said Friday that there had not been “sufficient progress” toward ridding North Korea of its nuclear weapons, he made it clear that he thought China was partly to blame.

Next month, President Xi Jinping of China is expected to make his first state visit to the North — one that could see him standing beside Kim Jong Un, the country’s leader, on the reviewing stand of a military parade.

Such an image would seem to bolster Trump’s suggestion that China, angered by U.S. tariffs on its goods, was no longer a partner in the effort to disarm the North.

But analysts in China say that is not necessarily the case — at least, not yet.

China, they say, still harbors deep suspicions about the North and Kim, despite the recent thaws in the neighbors’ off-and-on relationship. And while it is giving the North some economic help around the edges, they say, China is mostly abiding by the international sanctions meant to punish Pyongyang for its nuclear pursuits.

“There is no evidence that China is ceasing to cooperate with the United States on nuclear and missile issues,” said Cheng Xiaohe, a North Korea expert at Renmin University in Beijing. “Trump made a wild guess from his perspective that because of the trade war, China won’t help with the nuclear issues.”

Still, he said, the intensity of the trade war with the United States, along with the increasing likelihood it will become a protracted standoff, has led China to be more passive about assisting Trump on North Korea.

“China is in a wait-and-see mode,” Cheng said. “It depends on how the United States trade war goes.”

Trump’s comments about China came as he announced on Twitter that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s planned visit in the coming week to North Korea was off. Pompeo has been pressing Pyongyang to follow up on the vague commitment to nuclear disarmament Kim made in June, when he met with Trump in Singapore.

On Saturday, China’s Foreign Ministry expressed “serious concern” about Washington’s attitude, after Trump partly blamed China for a lack of progress in denuclearization talks and for the cancellation of the Pompeo trip.

China is less interested in backing the denuclearization efforts because it feels burned by Trump on trade, according to a Western diplomat with contacts among the Chinese leadership. Its leaders had believed Trump would not proceed with the confrontational trade policies he promised during the presidential campaign if China helped him by going along with tougher U.N. sanctions against the North last year, the diplomat said.

Chinese officials said Trump had given such assurances, and they felt betrayed when he went ahead with aggressive tariffs this year, the diplomat said.

Xi’s visit to Pyongyang is likely to be on or near Sept. 9, the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding, Chinese analysts said. As it does with many significant anniversaries, North Korea plans to mark it with a military parade in the capital.

The Chinese government has not formally announced Xi’s trip — it usually makes such declarations just days ahead of time — but Chinese analysts and Western diplomats say preparations are underway for him to be in Pyongyang. Kim has visited China three times this year, all in an effort to win Xi’s support as he entered new diplomatic territory with Trump, and the Chinese want to reciprocate, analysts said.

Kim’s visit to Beijing in March, full of pomp and a bit of showmanship — the trip was still shrouded in secrecy when his train pulled into the capital — was his first overseas trip as leader. In May, he flew to the Chinese port city of Dalian for another meeting with Xi, and he flew to Beijing days after his June meeting with Trump.

On each trip, Kim, 34, was deferential to Xi, 65, a gesture that probably helped ease tensions between the two leaders that had existed for years, Chinese analysts said. Since coming to power in 2012, Xi had avoided visiting North Korea, and he barely disguised his suspicions of Kim, who ordered the execution of pro-Chinese officials in his government in 2013.

If Xi attends the Sept. 9 ceremony in Pyongyang, he will be watching highly choreographed formations of troops and weaponry. Analysts speculated that Kim might choose to send a signal by not putting nuclear-related armaments on display, as he has in past parades.

But either way, satellite imagery from the past few weeks suggests the North is preparing for a bigger parade than in past years, according to 38 North, a website produced by the Washington-based Stimson Center that analyzes North Korea.

“I very much expect this visit could happen, and it would greatly improve bilateral relations,” Lu Chao, director of the Border Study Institute at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, said of Xi’s trip. Sept. 9 is a particularly meaningful date for North Korea, and Xi’s presence would further strengthen a relationship that is warming but still not secure, he said.

In his Friday tweets, Trump said he believed China was no longer backing his efforts with the North as it once had, “despite the UN sanctions which are in place.”

Cheng said China, for its own national interest, still wanted an end to the North’s nuclear program. Beijing was relieved when Kim stopped firing missiles and launching underground nuclear tests close to the Chinese border, he said.

Chinese analysts Beijing had decided not to openly flout the sanctions against the North, which it supported in a series of votes at the United Nations last year. To do so would bring criticism from all quarters, not just the United States, they said.

But at the same time, China has called for easing the sanctions, and it appears to be seeking ways to increase its influence in North Korea by helping it open its economy, based on China’s experiences of the past four decades.

“I believe Xi has committed to provide some economic help to Kim Jong Un and implement it to a degree — otherwise, China would fall back to that difficult and embarrassing position over North Korea before Kim’s visit in March,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University.

North Korean workers are still employed at Chinese textile factories in northeastern China, and customs inspections at the border have eased slightly after heavy enforcement last year, Chinese traders have said.

China is also expected to send nearly twice as many tourists to North Korea as it did last year, with a target of 500,000, according to provincial officials in the northeast.