Is China Taking Away Kim Jong-un’s Nuclear Option?The innocuous-sounding Global Times is basically the id of the Chinese Communist party. A stridently nationalist tabloid newspaper with a flair for Breitbartian excess, the CCP-owned Times has, in recent weeks alone, referred to Australia as an “offshore prison,” warned of a “large-sale war” should the U.S. block China’s illegal expansion in the South China Sea, and written scathingly of the “Dalai Lama clique.” And now the newspaper’s editorialists have set their sights on an unusual target: North Korea.
In a staff editorial published Wednesday, the Global Times warns Pyongyang against conducting a widely predicted sixth nuclear test. (Experts suggest a detonation will likely come this month.) Citing a Trump administration “brimming with confidence and arrogance following the missile attacks on Syria,” the GT cautions the North Korean regime that a nuclear test will only anger a U.S. president who is “willing to be regarded as a man who honors his promises.”
But more striking is that the Global Times makes it clear that China will be quick to punish North Korea should it forge ahead with its nuclear program. “If the North makes another provocative move this month, the Chinese society will be willing to see the [United Nations Security Council] adopt severe restrictive measures that have never been seen before, such as restricting oil imports to the North,” says the paper. “Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program is intended for securing the regime, however, it is reaching a tipping point. Pyongyang hopes its gamble will work, but all signs point to the opposite direction.”
The Global Times’s editor, Hu Xijin, has said that he spends a lot of time with Chinese foreign ministry and security officials and that his newspaper can speak “willfully” in a way that government officials can’t. There’s a good chance, therefore, that this editorial knows of what it speaks: Should Pyongyang launch another nuclear weapon, Beijing may finally put its foot down. Restricting oil exports from China into North Korea, for example, could be a truly significant blow to Kim Jong-un’s regime, which has no oil reserves of its own.
Hopefully, for the North Korean regime’s sake, that country’s notorious Internet filter doesn’t block the Global Times: The GT is sending it a message it should probably pay attention to. On the other hand, a North Korean nuclear test may actually be a good thing, if it convinces Beijing to take long overdue actions against its sort-of ally.
