October 20, 2006
China May Press North Koreans
By JOSEPH KAHN
BEIJING, Oct. 19 China is prepared to step up pressure on North Korea in coming weeks by reducing oil shipments, among other measures, if the country refuses to return to negotiations or conducts more nuclear tests, Chinese government advisers and scholars who have discussed the matter with the leadership say.
If Beijing does take a tougher line on its neighbor and longtime ally, the action is likely to bolster its relationship with the United States. Washington has urged Chinese leaders to use all the tools at their disposal to put additional pressure on Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader.
Among the most potent of those tools is oil. China provides an estimated 80 to 90 percent of North Koreas oil imports, shipped by pipeline at undisclosed prices that Chinese officials say represent a steep discount from the world market price. Any reduction in that aid could severely hamper North Koreas already faltering economy.
Several leading Chinese experts said senior officials had indicated in the past week that they planned to slap new penalties on North Korea going beyond the ban on sales of military equipment imposed by the United Nations. But they would be likely to hold off if Mr. Kim agreed to return soon to multilateral talks North Korea has boycotted since September 2005. Years of talks have produced meager results.
Discussions about how to respond to the nuclear test, which was described by one expert as a political earthquake for Chinese leaders, come amid a flurry of diplomacy aimed at ironing out enforcement of United Nations sanctions and luring Mr. Kim back to negotiations.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to arrive here Friday to meet with Chinese officials. On Thursday in Pyongyang, Mr. Kim met a delegation sent by President Hu Jintao of China, the first diplomatic contact with the North Korean leader since the nuclear test on Oct. 9.
There was no immediate word on what Mr. Kim told the Chinese, but Beijing experts said he would most likely have declined to meet with the delegation, headed by a cabinet-level official, State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan, unless he hoped to head off additional penalties by promising to resume negotiations.
China is going to have to make some crucial choices in the coming days, said one senior international relations specialist who has participated in top-level discussions of the matter but asked to remain anonymous. I think Chinese leaders are prepared to take a hard line, but Kim may be smart enough to try to divide China and the U.S.
China and the United States already have some differences over how to enforce the United Nations sanctions that they and the rest of the Security Council voted for last Saturday. Beijing says it will not interdict North Korean cargo ships at sea, as the United States and Japan have recommended, and has warned against seeking to use the sanctions to provoke a confrontation.
All sides need to consider how to implement Resolution 1718 in a balanced way and not devise ways to willfully expand the sanctions, Liu Jianchao, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Thursday, referring to the Security Council resolution banning the sale or transfer of missile- or nuclear-weapons-related goods to North Korea. Sanctions are the signal, not the goal.
But Chinese experts who have taken part in discussions about how to manage the situation said that after North Koreas missile tests in July, Chinese leaders concluded that Mr. Kim might not negotiate a way out of the impasse unless he had no other choice. Officials felt badly stung by the nuclear test and have dug in their heels on ending the nuclear program there, the experts said.
China has opposed military action or an embargo to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to its Korean War ally and has subsidized Mr. Kims its government despite gross human rights violations. But it is also wary that Mr. Kim may set off an arms race in Northeast Asia and prompt Japan and South Korea, and even Taiwan, to seek nuclear weapons.
Beijings relations with North Korea have been strained for many years, and some Chinese officials argue that Mr. Kim wants a nuclear trump card to intimidate China as much as the United States.
In the wake of the test, President Hu renewed his governments commitment to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, and ruled out recognizing North Korea, as a fellow nuclear power, they said.
I believe that Chinese leaders are firmly resolved to roll back the nuclear program and not accept it as an accomplished fact, said Zhang Liangui, a Korea expert at the Communist Partys Central Party School in Beijing who has favored taking a tougher line.
I do not think that the resolve of the Chinese leadership is going to be less than the resolve of the American leadership, he said.
Others agreed, arguing that as long as the Bush administration kept its focus on a diplomatic solution, China would work to maintain solidarity with the United States.
The only issue that they do not agree on is interdiction at sea, said Xu Guangyu, a retired general who is now a member of the Chinese Arms Control and Disarmament Association, a government-sponsored institute. For the most part the United States has responded to this with the right tone, so I dont see a major obstacle to cooperation.
Mr. Xu said the question now was not whether China and the United States could maintain common ground, but rather how Mr. Kim would respond to the universal condemnation of his test. The matter is in his hands, Mr. Xu said. If he returns to negotiating, the pressure will ease. If he conducts another test, that would be very reckless.
Chinese officials have already begun carrying out measures intended to increase the pressure.
Customs officers have begun inspecting cargo passing through Dandong, a major trading post with North Korea. China Southern Airlines, the only Chinese carrier that flies to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, announced that it had suspended service to the city.
Chinese banks, fearing possible freezes on assets, have restricted some forms of transactions involving North Korean interests while expanding a crackdown on suspected laundering of drug money and counterfeiting by individuals and front companies associated with North Korea, according to Chinese officials and local news reports.
More important, Chinese officials have discussed staged reductions in oil shipments if North Korea ignores international pressure, scholars who have been told about the leaderships planning said.
Beijing is also North Koreas leading provider of grain, but is not likely to suspend food shipments. North Korea suffers severe food shortages, with about a third of the population depending on imported grain.
China has not threatened publicly to cut off oil supplies, and it has resisted imposing economic sanctions. Instead, it has emphasized reviving the six-nation nuclear talks that collapsed a year ago. At least superficially, that puts China on the same page as the United States, which has called for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
China has put much more emphasis on the process of negotiating than has the United States, which has expressed interest only in the results. Beijing argues that resuming talks would de-escalate the crisis, giving Mr. Kim an incentive to freeze his nuclear activities and making it possible to find a peaceful way out.
Some Chinese experts speculate that Mr. Kim, having proved that he has mastered at least the basics of manufacturing atomic bombs, may now be willing to return to the table, feeling he can demand a higher price for agreeing to discontinue the program.
Kim has done nothing but anger China for the last few months, said Shi Yinhong, a foreign policy expert at Peoples University in Beijing. But he could be smart enough to make a concession now, just before Rice visits, to create some trouble for the United States.
After Mr. Kim twice ignored Chinas stern warnings first when he tested ballistic missiles in July, and then when he exploded a nuclear device close to the Chinese border many officials here felt chagrined about having sheltered him, people who discussed the situation with the leadership said.
The people who were the most critical of Kim in the past were a minority, said one scholar. But they have a bigger voice now. The people who had the most favorable interpretations of Kims actions are for now keeping quiet.
