CRN Politics

By Barry Secrest

The first thing to understand about the two authoritarian dictatorships of China & North Korea (the world's most notorious tag-team of Mutually Assured Destruction)  is the fact that China has always used North Korea as a primary proxy nation (with Russia now running a close Chinese marionette second)  to antagonize the entire South Pacific region in general, but worse, to threaten both South Korea and America, specifically, for merely existing.

It is China that even now consistently provides nuclear attack technology to the North Koreans allowing them to quickly build the nuclear capability that the "rogue nation" now enjoys, which essentially involves terrorizing the rest of the world with their 3rd-string nukes at China's unannounced and highly misanthropic misdirection.

However, that's only part of the story.

The other part of the story involves the fact that China delivers more than 70% of all of North Korea's energy, food, technology and other goods, which it could easily deny to the North Koreans, if desired, in order for the North Koreans to achieve detente with the rest of the world, but only if China saw fit to take action. 

In effect, China could easily starve the North Koreans, into submission, by withholding food and energy and defeat their game of "nuclear red rover" in repeatedly threatening a nuclear attack on the US  Mainland.

The simple fact is, however, that China has no desire to remove the risk to other nations, including the US  because then China would lose its advantage in using the threat of North Korea to their greatest economic and otherwise, benefit.

Despite China's ongoing kabuki theater of pretending that it cannot act against North Korea, there's also the fact that the US is China's number-one best trading customer, and with a bullet, to the tune of a deranged $ 600 billion, if not more,  in annual trade deficits to America's distinct disadvantage.

Talk about a gracious self-imposed redistribution of wealth, good grief!

But, indirectly threatening a nuclear attack on your best customer, it should be pointed out, is not the most solicitous way to keep them as an enduringly awesome client.

In fact, China should be kissing America's arse on a daily basis and then some, especially with America's very jealous new president-- most especially when it comes to trade and extreme trading deficits.

The UK Telegraph has the rest of the details  --at least on this part of the story:

Now comes the story that the back-stabbing Chi-comms, while consistently delaying any economic actions against North Korea never minding their mysteriously quick build-up of nuclear capability, has warned Trump "Don't stab us in the back" while China is, in fact, doing that very thing to the US with its North Korean proxy.

China has hit back at Donald Trump over North Korea, with a top official blaming Washington and Pyongyang for raising tensions, while state media warned the US not to “stab China in the back”.

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The US president said in two angry tweets at the weekend that he was “very disappointed” with China and that he would no longer allow Beijing to “do nothing” over North Korea.

Trump has long believed that China holds the key to forcing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program, given that Beijing is Pyongyang’s only diplomatic backer and a key trading partner.

But Liu Jieyi, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, said: "No matter how capable China is, China's efforts will not yield practical results because it depends on the two principal parties.

"They (the United States and North Korea) hold the primary responsibility to keep things moving, to start moving in the right direction, not China," he told a news conference at the end of China's month-long presidency of the Security Council.

Trump’s  comments came after North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in defiance of United Nations sanctions on Friday. 

"Nikki Haley, Washington’s ambassador to the UN, said on Sunday that the US was "done talking about North Korea" and that it was time for China to act. 

Meanwhile, Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State said: “China and Russia bear unique and special responsibility for this growing threat to regional and global stability.”

China’s official state news agency, Xinhua, also waded into the row with a commentary which poked fun at the US President for his use of Twitter.

“Trump is something of a character, and he enjoys tweeting,” the commentary said. “But an emotional response cannot be the guiding policy to solve the Korean peninsula’s nuclear issue.”

“In order to solve the nuclear issue on the peninsula, relevant parties should use practical action and show sincerity, stop shirking responsibility, and especially should not stab China in the back.”

Then, comes the proof of China's almost exclusive trade arrangement with the North Koreans, who can scarcely produce anything on their own, from Fox Business:

"China is [North Korea’s] only window into [the] outside world and provides it much of its fuel, food and technical goods. It is vital to NK's existence,” Ambassador James F. Jeffrey, the Washington Institute fellow and former assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor in the George W. Bush administration, told FOX Business.

China is North Korea’s single most important trading partner. China accounts for an estimated 70% of Pyongyang’s total trade, including essential goods and services like food and energy, according to 2016 data from the Congressional Research Service. In 2015 North Korea imported $2.95 billion worth of goods from China, and exported $2.83 billion there, according to data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

“China clearly can, and has from time to time, used its economic leverage to persuade North Korea's leader. Last decade, when China's financial institutions were named as potential money laundering concerns by the U.S. Treasury, China halted fuel shipments to [North Korea] in order to get them to return to multilateral talks,” Stephen Yates, former deputy assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs and D.C. Intel Advisory CEO told FOX Business."

So, while it seems that America has been playing nice with China, whose military-might pales in comparison to the US, it may be time now to play not-so-nice beginning with the embarrassing trade imbalance that China seems to now see as a natural part of a very one-sided relationship while simultaneously laughing at America while pulling the marionette strings of North Korea as its unleashed brute of an attack-dog.

But, as we often say, down south, "that dog just won't hunt" especially while America is being threatened every day by China's greatest and most dependent ally, in North Korea.

In effect, if China wants to devolve into a trade war with the US, by not reigning in its diminutive little nuclear pit-bull of a backwoods nation, it would be a very short war indeed, especially since America, all things being equal, has absolutely nothing to lose in the belligerent exchange, and that's America's greatest unexplored advantage.