In typical Chinese fashion, after the mailed fist comes the velvet glove.
Having warned the US via an editorial in Global Times yesterday that it will defend North Korea if the US invades North Korea and seeks to overthrow Kim Jong-un’s government, the Chinese government followed this up today with a telephone call to US President Trump by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
As the war of words between the US and North Korea continues to mount, an increasingly angry and worried China has given Washington and Pyongyang a clear public hint of where its red lines are.
The hint came in an editorial in Global Times, a newspaper owned by the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper the People’s Daily, which is often used by the Chinese government to express opinions it holds but which it feels it might be too provocative to air officially.
Multiple western media outlets are reporting an editorial in China’s Global Times as corresponding to official Chinese policy. This is not the case. Official Chinese policy is a position which calls for North Korea to cease its missile tests while simultaneously calling on the United States, South Korea and Japan to refrain from their missile tests and military drills in the region. It is further Chinese policy to request that all sides including both Pyongyang and Washington, engage in dialogue to de-escalate the situation. Russia’s position is the same as China’s.
If the Chinese or anyone else imagined that the sanctions resolution recently passed by the UN Security Council would calm tensions in the Korean Peninsula, they must by now be disabused of that illusion.
Though there have been no tests by North Korea since the UN Security Council vote – whether of ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons – the rhetoric instead of calming down has become heated. Moreover for once it is Washington rather than Pyongyang that has taken the initiative in the war of words.
President Trump’s hopes that by ramping up talk of war with North Korea he might force China to ramp up pressure on that country has suffered a blow today in the form of a strongly critical editorial of his whole foreign policy stance in the Chinese English language daily the Global Times.
An editorial in The Global Times – an English language website owned and run by The People’s Daily, which is the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party – is being widely reported around the world as a threat to go to war with the US over the South China Sea. Examples of the way in which this editorial is being reported can be found in The Guardian.
This is a complete misunderstanding of what the editorial said.
