Be Afraid: China Can't Control North Korea

Be Afraid: China Can't Control North Korea

Apr 25, 2014 02:00 am | Gordon G. Chang

Gordon G. Chang

This month in Beijing, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel asked China’s leader Xi Jinping to do more to disarm North Korea. In February, Secretary of State John Kerry, when he was in the Chinese capital, goaded his counterparts on the same topic. President Obama, while meeting Xi in The Hague during the Nuclear Security Summit in March, discussed the denuclearization of the North.
The Chinese are getting a little peeved by all this recent attention. Beijing’s ambassador to the United States in the middle of this month was unhappy about Washington leaning on his country. “You are giving us a mission impossible,” Cui Tiankai said to an audience in the American capital.
A decade ago, China chose not to use its considerable influence on the North. Now, from all appearances, it doesn’t have much of it. That’s probably why Ambassador Cui complains about receiving impossible missions from Americans.
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