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from The Washington Post....

China will back fresh U.N. measures on North Korea
over nuclear tests

But China's foreign minister does not say whether Beijing would back crippling steps
such as cutting oil shipments to the North.

By EMILY RAUHALA | 7:29AM EDT - Thursday, September 07, 2017

Trucks transport goods to North Korea through the Friendship Bridge linking China and North Korea on September 5th.
— Photograph: Minoru Iwasaki/Associated Press.

BEIJING — China’s foreign minister said on Thursday that Beijing would support further U.N.-imposed “measures” against North Korea following its largest nuclear test, but stopped short of saying whether China would back crippling economic sanctions such as halts to fuel shipments.

The comments by Wang Yi suggested possible room for co-operation over U.S.-drafted plans to increase pressures on North Korea after its nuclear test earlier this week.

President Trump has made pressuring China to “do more” on North Korea a priority. After Sunday's missile test, he tweeted that Pyongyang has become a “threat and embarrassment to China”— a rather pointed critique of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

China — the main economic lifeline for North Korea — has long been hesitant to completely cut off the crude oil supply to North Korea, wary that economic instability could bring a flood of refugees to the border and U.S. soldiers to its doorstep.

“Given the new developments on the Korean Peninsula, China agrees that the U.N. Security Council should respond further by taking necessary measures,” Wang, the foreign minister, told reporters.

“We believe that sanctions and pressure are only half of the key to resolving the issue. The other half is dialogue and negotiation,” he added.

Wang did not specify what type of measures he had in mind, compounding questions about what the international community can do next.

The United States is seeking the toughest-yet U.N. sanctions against North Korea, according to a draft resolution circulated on Wednesday. The sanctions would stop all oil and natural gas exports and freeze the government's foreign financial assets.

North Korea greeted the proposal with a threat: “We will respond to the barbaric plotting around sanctions and pressure by the United States with powerful counter measures of our own,” read a statement delivered at a summit in Russia on Thursday.

Russia, which has veto power at the United Nations, has also expressed opposition to the plan.

Russia and China are in favor of a “double suspension” deal that would see North Korea halt nuclear and missile tests if the United States and South Korea stop holding joint military exercises — a plan that the U.S. and South Korea have rejected.

But after a Wednesday night phone call with the Chinese president, Trump struck a more conciliatory tone, suggesting that he and Xi were largely in agreement on what to do.

“I believe that President Xi agrees with me 100 percent,” Trump told reporters. “He doesn't want to see what's happening there either.”

“We had a very, very frank and very strong phone call,” Trump continued. “President Xi would like to do something.”

Trump, like Wang, failed to specify what that something might be.

From China's perspective, an oil cutoff would be a major step.

Jin Qiangyi, a professor at the Center for North and South Korean Studies at Yanbian University, said cutting off North Korea's oil supply could mean “trouble” for China.

“What would we do if there was chaos after cutting off oil?” he asked. “Besides, oil is the last card we have.”

Zhang Liangui, a North Korean studies expert at the Communist Party's Central Party School in Beijing, said that Sunday's nuclear test sparked real fear about contamination near the China-North Korea border, a fact that could encourage China to finally play the card.

But even if China went ahead with oil sanctions, Zhang said, Russia could still block the plan.

“Whether North Korea has nuclear missiles or not does not mean as much to Russia as it does to China,” he said. “Therefore, Russia might be seeing things from a very different angle.”

• Luna Lin contributed from Beijing.

• Emily Rauhala is a China Correspondent for The Washington Post. She was previously a Beijing-based correspondent for TIME, and an editor at the magazine's Hong Kong office.

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