Anyone noticed the recent UNSC ministerial meeting when Chinese FM Wang Yi made the following statements in his speech?
The italic texts are my comments.
- The current crisis is not Chinese creation: It is creation of US and NK, China is not going to take the blame for the mess from either side.
- China has been promoting the Parallel Two Way Approach (双轨并行) "Denuclearization and Peace Treaty (diplomatic acceptance)". China does not agree with just one (Denuclearization alone) part of the two.
- Enforcing the UN resolution is not just about enforcing sanctions on NK, BUT also includes hault and stop US/SK's provocative military drills and restart of diplomatic negotiations. China is politely but clearly blaming US and SK as much as NK. To put it blantly, China is saying "US and SK are equally faulty as NK".
- China firmly (believe or not) enforce UN sanctions on the (NK) nuclear and rocket activities. Of course, China does not want to give NK the wrong hope.
I have mentioned this position of China twice in this thread. I think it is the most clear statement (therefor probably the last words) from PRC's official position. If anyone still try to spin or twist or suggest China to knock NK on behalf of US and SK, he/she would be delusional from a US/SK perspective or being a Chinese fooled by US/SK propaganda no matter how good his/her Chinese language skill is.
P.S. CJDBY restored 2 or 3 days ago. The one sub-forum that is missing is "军事茶馆", a general/strategic discussion sub-forum where most of the propagandas (mentioned above) were active. I knew somebody just over-bet their lucks thinking they can mess around with impunity.
Its a sign of how effective the western propaganda machine is that it can get many rational Chinese to believe in something that is utterly moronic from a Chinese POV.
If you see through all the BS and just look at the core power dynamics, little has changed except to America's disadvantage from a military standpoint.
Not only could NK conventional weapons obliterate Seoul as they always could, and served as the primary NK strategic deterrence to American military advanturism, it has also added nuclear weapons to their arsenal.
The optimal time to strike from a US prospective as when NK first detonated a nuke.
Not only did the US enjoy a significantly better military edge compared to China, at that time, NK still lacked a deliverable nuclear weapon.
In the years since, the US military edge against China has been massively eroded, and now there is a good chance NK could drop nukes on SK and Japan in the ultimate retaliation to an attack.
The current US pressure stems from the fact that NK appears to be on the cusp of developing ICBMs capable of hitting US cities with a nuclear warhead.
But that pressing strategic need does not change the reality that the US has no good military options against NK. NK is geographically bless in that it has US allies and US troops themselves within striking range. Trump would have to be loony to expect a Syria like situation where he can order strikes and his victim would have no way to hit back.
As such, a limited strike serves no real purpose and will likely only trigger a NK retaliation strike that costs SK and the US more, so raises the stakes further.
In this instance, NK has limits escalation advantage in that it believes China will be forced to step in if certain red lines are crossed. So it is in their best interest to make the conflict as bloody as possible. Ideally sucking in US ground forces to push significantly past the 38th parallel and force China's hand.
Trump's current strategy rests entirely on trying to force China's hand in another way - that by creating so much tension and threat, that he hopes China would decide that regime change in NK was the lessor of two evils, and so remove Fatty Kim for him.
He could not care less what that would cost China in lives, treasure or diplomatic damage. Hell, he, and most of the talking heads on western mainstream news, would probably secretly just love it if China got duped into attacking NK for him and NK dropped nukes all over northern China.
Fortunately, China's leaders and diplomats appear to see right through both Fatty K and Trumps games, and instead have decided to subltly call both their bluffs.
The signals that China has been sending out to the world through both official diplomatic channels and unofficial news OPEDs is to essentially tell the US to have a go if they think they are hard enough. Just expect NK to hit you right back like the desperate psychopath with nothing to loose it is.
With the giant caveat that the US must not take that as a blank cheque for annexation of NK or regime change.
China is pressuring NK by suggesting it may just stand back and break out the popcorn if the US launches attacks against them if they brought it on their own head.
OTOH, China has set its own red line such that the US and SK would have little scope to achieve any meaningful military victories in an open shooting way with NK without crossing them.
The goal is to try and get both the US and NK to see that there are enormous costs and far bigger risks associated with any kind of military misadventure, and so get them both to step back from the brink.
