North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal Threatens China’s Path to Power
"That’s because it is the only East Asian power with nuclear weapons." Even if the United States steps back from the region, Mr. White added, "North Korea’s capability means China can never be able to dominate the region as much as its leaders today probably hope." The Trump administration has bet on China to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, shunning talks with Mr. Kim and gambling
that Beijing can be persuaded to use its economic leverage over the North to rein it in.
From then on, according to Shen Zhihua, a historian of Chinese-Korean relations, "The treaty of alliance between China
and North Korea became a piece of scrap paper." China now imports more goods from South Korea than it does from any other country, while the South counts China as its largest market for both exports and imports.
"If Japan and South Korea feel forced to go for radical options like nuclear weapons, it will badly affect regional diplomacy." The spread
of nuclear weapons, he added, would thrust China into "a new Cold War" in Asia, perhaps with a beefed-up American military presence.
Toby Dalton said that My guess is that most Western analysts, perhaps a bit cynically, would assume
that Chinese officials were fully aware of the nuclear trade, given the strong ties between the Pakistani and Chinese nuclear establishments,
And in 1990, it opened its Lop Nur test site to Pakistan
and secretly let the country test its first nuclear bomb there, according to "The Nuclear Express," a book by two veterans of the American nuclear program.
Mao is often quoted in the West as saying that North Korea and China are "as close as lips and teeth."
But his actual words, an ancient Chinese idiom, are better translated, "If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold." He was warning that China would be in danger without North Korea.
For more than a decade, the United States has asked China for talks to discuss what each nation would do if North Korea collapses —
but China has resisted, worried that agreeing to do so would be a betrayal.