By Donald Kirk
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It's not just that China is North Korea's only real ally, its bulwark of defense since the 1950-53 Korean War. It's also that China's differences with the U.S. are deepening with the indictment of its biggest smartphone maker for theft of U.S. trade secrets, for industrial espionage and for money-laundering.
And it's also that the U.S. is looking for ways to make a deal with North Korea that would tone down the hostility dating from the Korean War and promote reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula.
The indictment of smartphone giant Huawei comes in the midst of a trade war between the U.S. and China, on top of the contest for control of the South China Sea, China's Belt and Road Initiative across the Himalayas through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean and deepening claims to the island province of Taiwan, basically an independent nation.
All these factors give China's President Xi Jinping reason to intensify ties with North Korea while North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un plots to draw President Trump into compromising the U.S. alliance with South Korea at their second summit. In this three-sided game, U.S. strategists are busy thinking of ways to get Kim to make concessions, pulling him away from China toward serious rapprochement with the U.S. and South Korea.
The Washington Times, a conservative paper with ties to the Unification Church and its founder, the late Moon Sun-myung, reports the Trump administration "is quietly preparing a special economic package designed to entice Kim Jong-un into taking specific steps toward dismantling his nuclear weapons program" at their next summit. At the heart of the deal is a multi-billion-dollar account from which Kim could draw as a reward for taking "meaningful denuclearization steps," as Patrick Cronin of the Hudson Institute is quoted as saying. Those exact "steps" ― and how much is in the account ― can be "negotiated."
That's an intriguing idea reflecting Cronin's long career dealing with Korean issues. U.S. negotiators may well be fine-tuning the concept for discussion in working-level pre-summit talks with the North Koreans as the basis for a final agreement between Trump and Kim at the summit.
Let's not, however, get carried away by fantasies. It's extremely unlikely Kim will take the bait and say, thanks, now I'm giving up my nukes and missiles and all the facilities for making them. Nor will he say, here's a list of all the sites where we're working on this stuff, you're welcome to take a look and see we're keeping our end of the bargain, now show us the money.
It's unfortunate that think-tankers and academics, who love to come up with fancy "solutions," should be wasting their time on notions that amount to same-old, same-old. Slice and dice their schemes, and they amount to the same thing: luring Kim to go for "the pot of gold waiting for him on the other side of the rainbow," as an anonymous source told the Washington Times.
That's where China comes in. Wishful thinkers believe President Xi Jinping is urging Kim to wake up and reconcile with both the U.S. and South Korea for the sake of peace and tranquility on the Korean Peninsula ― and China's obvious interest in earning huge profits from its trade with the U.S. Rising difficulties between the U.S. and China, however, give Xi good reason to embarrass the U.S., to undermine the U.S.-South Korean alliance, to drive the U.S. into a corner while the trade war worsens and the U.S. pursues its case against Huawei.
The arrest in Canada of Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, accused of an elaborate scheme for violating sanctions against Iran, may be separate from the charges against Huawei, but they all go together. China is loudly denouncing all such claims while the U.S. wants Canada to extradite Meng to the U.S., where she would face a lengthy trial and possible prison sentence.
As a sign of Chinese anger over Meng's detention, the Chinese have arrested two Canadians on unspecified grounds and sentenced a third to death on drug charges. The Chinese will go ballistic if Meng is tried and sentenced by a U.S. court. They'll be still more outraged if the charges against Huawei, which the Americans see as the tip of a large iceberg of Chinese industrial espionage, results in harsh penalties even if the real villains, including Meng's father, never go on trial.
With the Chinese and Americans locked in a trade war, North Korea would be a pawn for China to use to escalate the pressure, to embarrass the Americans, to hold over Trump's head while he goes on thinking he can really pull Kim into a real deal that's not going to happen.
Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) has been covering North Korea and the nuclear issue for decades.
