BEIJING — Secretary of State John F. Kerry said he had held a very constructive meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping on Friday as he sought Beijing’s help in deterring North Korea from pursuing nuclear weapons.
Nevertheless, experts said Kerry faced an uphill battle over the issue, with China unlikely to push its long-time ally too far over the issue, and unwilling to join a U.S.-led attempt to isolate the Pyongyang regime.
He described his Friday morning meeting with Xi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing as very positive. “I’m glad we had an opportunity to dig into the detail of some of the North Korea challenges,” he said. “And also I appreciate his willingness to move forward on the climate change initiative.”
Kerry had on Thursday to coordinate with the South Koreans. But how exactly the United States can convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program after decades of frustrated efforts remains a vexing problem with no immediate answers.
A senior State Department official traveling with Kerry described the trip as “an effort to translate ‘denuclearization’ from a noun to a verb.” The official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, said Kerry wants to “enlist greater and greater levels of Chinese cooperation in actually helping to achieve the goal of denuclearization, not just talking about it.”
Since Kim Jong Il’s 2011 death and the elevation of his son Kim Jong Un, North Korea has issued a string of bellicose rhetoric and taken provocative actions, including a nuclear test last year that drew international condemnation. Analysts say signs in recent weeks suggest the renegade country may be on the verge of new missile and nuclear tests.
At the same time, Japan and South Korea — the United States’ two strongest allies in containing North Korea — have been heatedly disputing territorial and historical claims.
China remains the key to pushing North Korea toward denuclearization. Long seen as a key factor in propping up the Pyongyang regime, China has maintained stalwart support for North Korea for years — watering down international sanctions and sending desperately needed aid.
But early last year, after North Korea ignored its pleas to avoid the nuclear test, China began showing signs of frustration. Kerry and other U.S. officials said they were encouraged by the signs — such as tougher government statements and editorials debating China’s long-standing support of Pyongyang.
“China has responded. China has done positive things,” Kerry told reporters in Seoul, but he said that more is needed and vowed to ask the country “to use all the means at its disposal.”
“No country has a greater potential to influence North Korea behavior than China,” he said. “All of the refined fuel that goes in to move every automobile and airplane in North Korea comes from China. All of the fundamental, rudimentary banking structure it has with the world passes through China. Significant trade and assistance goes from China to North Korea.”
But China — which values stability above all else — is unlikely to abandon North Korea anytime soon. And much of its outspokenness against Pyongyang from last year has died down, especially after Kim Jong Un’s dramatic purge of his uncle Jang Song Thaek. Jang, Kim’s most prominent adviser, was executed in December and derided as “despicable human scum” by the regime.
“It’s been really quiet ever since then,” said Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor and a national security official under President George W. Bush. “I think the Chinese are as worried by the shake-up as everyone else. They’re in wait-and-see mode.”
In a recent report, the International Crisis Group said China was reluctant to take any coercive action that might destabilize the regime in Pyongyang, and was likely to continue its policy of diplomatic engagement and economic cooperation. “China’s fundamental geostrategic calculation remains and keeping it close,” it wrote, adding that a sustained shift towards a sterner policy had yet to take place and was unlikely any time soon.
Kerry was briefed by South Korean leaders Thursday on a rare diplomatic exchange between North and South Korea that happened the day before he arrived in Seoul.
For the first time in seven years, both sides held high-level talks on their armed border. The exchange has raised some hope of a thaw in the icy relations of late.
But analysts warn that such progress may be upset by joint military drills this month between the United States and South Korea that have traditionally drawn an angry reaction from Pyongyang.
This is Kerry’s fifth trip to Asia in his first year in office, but he has still to shake off a perception in some quarters he is more interested in the Middle East than in this part of the world.
The Obama administration says it wants to refocus American foreign policy on the Asia-Pacific, but that strategic rebalance has become something of a headache lately because of rising tensions between Japan and China, centered on about a chain of small, rocky islands.
Last November, China declared an air defense identification zone over much of the East China Sea, including over those islands, which are administered by Japan. It demanded that all noncommercial aircraft entering the zone identify themselves or face “defensive emergency measures”, a move that the United States saw as raising the risk of miscalculations and accidents that could spark a military conflict.
At the same time, China’s patrol vessels have kept a regular presence around the disputed islands, while its naval ships have also stepped up their presence in the South China Sea.
While China has portrayed the rebalance as a thinly veiled attempt to contain its rising power, U.S. allies worry that an Obama administration distracted by domestic politics or by other international crises has struggled to back up its rhetoric with a firm and consistent commitment to the region, which was scarcely mentioned in the State of the Union address.
Experts in Washington say the administration has also been perceived as sending mixed signals to Beijing, and some argue that Beijing has exploited what it perceives as weakness in Washington by becoming even more assertive.
In what seemed like an attempt to correct that perception, U.S. officials have ventured some unusually strong criticism of China’s actions this year.
“Five years in, the Obama administration appears to have learned the lesson of business in China. The nicer and more accommodating you are, the more you get played, sadly,” tweeted Bill Bishop, editor of the influential Sinocism newsletter, on Friday.
Beijing has responded by dismissing that U.S. criticism angrily. It blames Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for heightened tensions, and was particularly angry in December when Abe visited to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where 14 war criminals from World War II are honored
On Friday, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said the U.S. into ceasing its “provocative moves” or risk a regional conflict in the future.
“The United States has to know that, while Beijing has always been trying to address territorial brawls with some neighboring countries through peaceful means, it will not hesitate to take steps to secure its key national security interests according to China’s sovereign rights,” Xinhua said.
“To dial down the flaring regional tensions, what Washington is expected to do right at the moment is not to blame China but press Japan to call off its provocative moves.”
U.S. officials traveling with Kerry said he would urge the Chinese to show restraint, cool down its rhetoric and actions, and clarify its claims consistent with international law.
“The perception in the region and in the United States that is generated by the incremental actions that China has been taking ... is one of a country that is asserting its position through extra-legal and non-diplomatic means,” one official said. “That’s not a good image of China, and it is not a pattern of behavior by China that the U.S. or others want to see.”
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