China's growing military and political presence, built on its spectacular economic performance, means it's not so easily pushed around, says Northern Advocate columnist Vaughan Gunson.
China's growing military and political presence, built on its spectacular economic performance, means it's not so easily pushed around, says Northern Advocate columnist Vaughan Gunson.
Too much is being made of Trump's nuclear sabre-rattling in getting North Korean President Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table.
The narrative is that North Korea was acting like a schoolyard bully, only to be faced down by Trump who threatened "fire and fury".
The problem with this story, which some claim is grounds for Trump getting the Nobel Peace Prize, is that it overlooks a decisive factor in getting Kim Jong Un to come over all peace and lovey.
It's that China, this time, went along with the United Nations resolution to impose economic sanctions on North Korea. China is by far North Korea's largest trading partner, accounting for around 80 per cent of all exports and imports.
China's withholding of trade is devastating the North Korean economy, frightening a regime already paranoid about internal forces wishing to topple it.
There's been some suggestion that the US strong-armed China into imposing the sanctions, but China's growing military and political presence in the world, built on its spectacular economic performance, means that it's not so easily pushed around.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in shake hands after signing a joint statement at the border village of Panmunjon. Photo/AP
China's leaders choose to impose the sanctions, which means they must have had their reasons for doing so.
Certainly, China had nothing to gain from North Korea's provocative missile tests and the escalating war of words between Kim and Trump.
Understandably from China's perspective, they want less of an American military presence in Asia. The North Korean crisis was giving America the excuse it needed to build up its forces in the region. Not at all agreeable to China's security concerns.
The Communist Party leadership well knows that Washington sees China as the supreme threat to America's global power. They're hardly blind to the fact that Washington has been pursuing a policy of military encirclement.
China, for its part, doesn't want an open war with the United States, or a proxy-one fought on the Korean Peninsula.
China is happy, for the moment, to pursue its interests in the world by means other than through aggressive military interventions, or the threat of.
President Donald Trump during a news conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari at the White House in Washington yesterday. Photo / AP
They might be calculating that respect for the US around the world is declining, and it's not, therefore, in China's interests to be belligerent. Their softly-softly approach and financial largesse is proving successful in winning them allies around the world.
But North Korea is a headache for them. If the regime collapsed or the current leadership was ousted by US-backed forces, then unification with South Korea would be the likely outcome.
Given that South Korea is a close American ally with a large US troop presence, China would be facing the prospect of a hostile army stationed close to the Chinese mainland.
If the North Korean regime did start to unravel would China weigh-up the option of sending troops across the border? Risking an all-out war with South Korean forces backed by the United States? That's the dangerous friction at play here.
The best-case scenario for the world is that the ordinary people of North and South Korea can assert a desire to live in peace with each other free of any control or influence by either China or the United States.
At this point that looks a long way off, but it's what we in New Zealand should be wishing for.
