China and the Prospects of Denuclearization of North Korea

Abstract

This article interprets and analyzes the role of China in and the prospects of denuclearization of North Korea. Driven by its ruling party’s peculiar political interest of resisting, reducing, and replacing American power at the expense of its national interest of cooperating with the United States, Beijing has been alternatively facilitating (somewhat) and fettering (mostly) North Korean denuclearization to make the cause unavoidably long and arduous, if doable at all. The latest resumption of Beijing-Pyongyang ties, in reaction to the Trump-Kim summit, suggests that a fundamental change in Beijing’s strategic stance on the North Korean nuclear issue has taken place, making genuinely enabling peaceful denuclearization of the DPRK rather difficult as it would require literally a political change-of-heart in Beijing.