The New York Times:
BEIJING — North Korea’s biggest nuclear test, conducted last week less than 50 miles from the Chinese border, sent tremors through homes and schools in China’s northeast. But hours later, there was no mention of the test on China’s state-run evening television news, watched by hundreds of millions of viewers.
The decision on Friday to publicly ignore stark evidence of Pyongyang’s expanding nuclear capabilities illustrated the embarrassment that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, poses for his patrons in Beijing.
But although North Korea remains nearly 100 percent dependent on China for oil and food, Chinese analysts say Beijing will not modify its allegiance to North Korea or pressure the country to curtail its drive for a full-fledged nuclear arsenal, as the United States keeps requesting.
“The United States cannot rely on China for North Korea,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “China is closer to North Korea than the United States.”
China sees living with a Communist-ruled nuclear-armed state on its border as preferable to the chaos of its collapse, Mr. Shi said. The Chinese leadership is confident that North Korea will not turn its weapons on China, and that China can control its neighbor by providing enough oil to keep its economy afloat.
The alternative is a strategic nightmare for Beijing: a collapsed North Korean regime, millions of refugees piling into China and a unified Korean Peninsula under an American defense treaty.
The Obama administration’s decision to deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea also gives President Xi Jinping of China less incentive to cooperate with Washington on a North Korea strategy that could aim, for example, to freeze the North’s nuclear capacity, the analysts said.
The American-supplied missile defenses in South Korea, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad, have effectively killed any chance of China’s cooperating with the United States, they said.
“China is strongly opposed to North Korea’s nuclear weaponsbut at the same time opposes the defense system in South Korea,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an assistant professor of international relations at Renmin University. It is not clear which situation the Chinese leadership is more agitated about, he said.
Beijing interprets the Thaad deployment as another American effort to contain China. The system reinforces China’s view that its alliance with North Korea is an integral part of China’s strategic interests in Asia, with America’s treaty allies Japan and South Korea and tens of thousands of American troops close by, Mr. Shi said.
Washington insists that the Thaad system, due to be installed in 2017, is intended to defend South Korea against North Korean missiles, and is not aimed at China. The system “does not change the strategic balance between the United States and China,” President Obama said after meeting with Mr. Xi in Hangzhou, China, a week ago.
But China is not persuaded. Chinese officials argue that the Thaad radar can detect Chinese missiles on the mainland, undermining its nuclear deterrent.
So despite what Chinese analysts describe as the government’s distaste for Mr. Kim and his unpredictable behavior, China’s basic calculus on North Korea remains firm…
