America’s top diplomat on Friday said the US would take action if China declined to intervene in the military deployment of North Korea, a hermit state and Beijing ally the US has long accused of playing a destabilising role in East Asia.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he has told his Chinese counterparts that Washington wants Beijing’s help in handling the North Korean “nuclear programme” and denuclearising the Korean peninsula. He said the US would bolster its defence alliances with Japan and South Korea if China refrained from intervening.
Directing his remarks at China during a fireside chat at the Aspen Security Forum in the US state of Colorado, Blinken said: “We believe that you have unique influence and we hope that you’ll use it to get better cooperation from North Korea.
“But if you can’t or if you won’t, then we’re going to have to continue to take steps that aren’t directed at China but that China probably won’t like because it goes to strengthening and shoring up not only our own defences but also those of South Korea and Japan and a deepening of the work that all three of us are doing together.”
Beijing has criticised Washington’s defence alliances in East Asia, viewing them as efforts to monitor or contain China’s military. Seoul and Tokyo resent Pyongyang’s military tests, which sometimes take place near their airspace.
North Korea has conducted “one missile launch after another”, Blinken said. On July 12, Pyongyang carried out a second flight test of its Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile.
China, North Korea’s Communist neighbour, has offered it fuel and food aid in the past and brokered international dialogue on the country’s militarisation.
Blinken’s comments followed the disappearance on Tuesday of Private Travis King, an American soldier who ran into North Korea during a civilian tour near the border with South Korea.
The secretary of state said he had no updates on King’s whereabouts but that “there are certainly concerns” he might be subjected to torture in North Korea.
The US is now working to anchor a declining Sino-American relationship, Blinken said on Friday. He, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy John Kerry have all visited China within the past two months.
“It was important for us to put some stability back into this relationship, to put a floor under it, to make sure that the competition we’re clearly in does not veer into conflict, and that starts with engagement,” the diplomat said.
Blinken said China could help stem production of the illegal drug fentanyl that reaches the US through Mexico, control global climate change, and allow for the release of American detainees.
“If we weren’t engaged, we would be rightfully tagged with being irresponsible,” he said.
But challenges persist, and Blinken said on Friday the US had started a formal investigation into reports of Chinese hacking into US government emails.
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I don’t think China would ever invade NK, it would not be popular with the Chinese people either as a massive part of modern Chinese history is their participation in the Korean war. The US are asking them to lean on them with trade sanctions, since China allows people to travel over the China/NK border without checks or border police there is a lot of dark trade that happens there.
You are talking as if China is a democracy. Since when what’s popular with Chinese people matters?
I mean we don’t even have to go far. We can just look at covid pandemic where covid lockdowns were literal lockdowns.
It produces democratic results and that’s why it remains popular with the people. Understanding Chinese history is important here as the “Mandate of Heaven” is an important component of Chinese politics, losing the Mandate of Heaven is very very bad and results in justification among the population for revolution.
They were literal lockdowns in my country and much of the rest of europe too. We just ended them earlier while China tried to continue them for a few months longer.
Did you read the article? It essentially says “tell your little brat (that you created and use to destabilize the region) to STFU or we will be forced to supply SK and Japan with weapons for defense, and we are sure you won’t like that”
Wasn’t is the USSR that created North Korea?
That would be popular American propaganda which has no historical basis in reality. The US carved South Korea out of a unified Korea.
And of course the Soviets had no say whatsoever in what happened to the part of Korea they were occupying at the end of WW2. It was just the Americans’ doing, and definitely not an agreement between both occupying parties to split the country in half.
I feel like you’re just denying that because North Korea hasn’t been anywhere near as prosperous as South Korea.