Chinese President Xi’s silence on nuclear arms is a gift to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un
TOKYO (AP) — Chinese and North Korean state media devoted thousands of words to the issue this week. Xi Jinping his summit with Kim Jong Unbut he did not mention an issue important to Washington: the North’s determined pursuit of nuclear weapons that could threaten the United States and its allies in Asia.
Silence says more than carefully framed piles of propaganda.
Washington and Beijing were longtime diplomatic partners who tried to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions in exchange for much-needed aid and political recognition until disarmament talks finally broke down in 2019.
Beijing routinely called for “nuclear disarmament,” a bureaucratic term for “nuclear disarmament,” and there was hope in Washington, as well as in Seoul and Tokyo, that China would use its perceived influence as Pyongyang’s diplomatic and economic protector to force the North into a nuclear stalemate.
Xi’s visit to Pyongyang on Monday and Tuesday First visit there in seven years — which could mean that hope is over — and could signal a significant shift in the North’s view of its nuclear weapons.
From Beijing’s perspective, Xi’s silence may be an acknowledgment of how far North Korea’s nuclear program has come since Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011, as well as how unlikely diplomacy is to persuade the North to give up the weapons it sees as its greatest guarantee against foreign interference.
Xi’s silence on nuclear weapons is worth gold for North Korea
The Chinese leader’s last visit to North Korea in 2019 was completely different; Xi was quoted in Chinese media as saying his country would play a constructive role in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.
Beijing wants stability in North Korea and the region above all else. A collapse in Pyongyang could send millions of people flooding across their shared borders.
To that end, China has often refrained from directly pressing for an end to North Korea’s nuclear program, according to an analysis by Jiyong Zheng, dean of the Institute of Regional Studies at Tianjin University of Foreign Studies in China.
Instead, Beijing called for the denuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula; It was a careful statement that also allowed China to express its desire to end US commitments to use its nuclear arsenal to protect South Korea and to deploy US nuclear-capable bombers near the Korean Peninsula.
Zheng wrote that in recent months, Beijing has signaled that it wants to prioritize stabilizing the situation on the peninsula, using denuclearization as a secondary goal.
“China is increasingly concluding that a strict nuclear disarmament-first approach is impractical and could further deteriorate the regional security environment,” he said.
It is a gain for Kim Jong Un that his nuclear bombs are never mentioned or criticized in public. He has long called for international recognition of his country as a nuclear-weapon state, which could lead to the lifting of UN sanctions.
Xi’s silence is bad news for Seoul and Washington
Asked on Tuesday whether Seoul should lower its expectations for Beijing after Xi sought to avoid the nuclear issue in Pyongyang, South Korean Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Park Il insisted that China continues to support its goal of nuclear disarmament.
Similarly after last month Summit between US President Donald Trump and XiThe White House said the two leaders confirmed their shared goal of denuclearizing North Korea.
However, China said only US and Chinese leaders discussed the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.
On Sunday, Kim’s sister and senior official Kim Yo Jong rejected US statements about the Xi-Trump meeting, calling them “misinformation”.
Last week Kim Jong Un announced A new facility to produce nuclear content and promised to support nuclear forces at an “exponential rate.” His sister also said that any U.S. effort to denuclearize North Korea was an “anachronistic dream.”
Park Won Gon, a professor at Seoul Ewha Women’s University, stated that China may not want to see North Korea and the United States getting too close, and said Beijing may prefer to keep North Korea within its sphere of influence and use this relationship with the United States as leverage.
Xi may be tacitly accepting North Korea’s demand for nuclear weapons
North Korea produces enough nuclear fuel for about 10 to 20 bombs a year and is close to perfecting intercontinental ballistic missile technology that could deliver a nuclear bomb to the U.S. mainland, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung told reporters on Monday.
Meanwhile, Kim emphasized that nuclear weapons are an important part of the North’s national identity. He enshrined North Korea’s nuclear status in the constitution and devoted an increasing share of resources, industry and bureaucracy to maintaining it.
Some analysts see China’s avoidance of using the word “denuclearization” during Xi’s visit this time as a clear change in Beijing’s stance and a tacit acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear status.
According to Seong-Hyon Lee, Senior Fellow on US-China Relations at the George HW Bush Foundation, this shift could mean that efforts by the US, Japan and South Korea to deter the North will turn into regular pressure rather than something temporary.
“Beijing’s silence should be seen as a deliberate strategic signal, not a bureaucratic oversight,” Lee said. “By tacitly accepting North Korea’s nuclear status, Beijing is strengthening its position as an indispensable stakeholder in future negotiations.”
Even so, there may be limits to China’s acceptance of North Korea’s military objectives.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha Womans University, said that while Xi’s visit signaled a “strategic embrace of Kim,” it was “not a blank check for North Korea.”
Easley said Beijing wants stability and respect for its regional goals. “North Korea’s persistent expansion of its military capabilities is pushing the limits of what its larger neighbor can tolerate.”
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Associated Press reporters Kim Tong-hyung and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, Huizhong Wu in Bangkok and Simina Mistreanu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Foster Klug, AP’s news director for Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific, has covered North Korea and traveled there frequently since 2005.
