Abacus | The real reason China won’t exert economic pressure on North Korea

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson thinks that if only he can enlist Beijing’s support, sanctions will compel Kim Jong-un to give up his nuclear arsenal – here’s why he’s wrong

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visits construction sites in Pyongyang. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:00am, 19 Mar 2017Updated: 9:00am, 19 Mar 2017

Speaking on Thursday ahead of his first trip to Beijing, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged that Washington’s policy towards North Korea had failed.

That’s putting it mildly. After more than 20 years of US efforts aimed at halting Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme, the North Korean regime is closer than ever to developing a credible strike capability. This month, it fired four medium-range missiles into the Sea of Japan in an exercise apparently aimed at demonstrating its targeting ability.

That test followed the underground detonation last September of a nuclear device with twice the force of the US atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Suddenly, the day when Kim Jong-un can mount a nuclear warhead on a missile that can threaten North Korea’s neighbours, and even the continental United States, no longer seems so far away. As Tillerson said on Thursday: “It is clear a different approach is required.”

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, left, gets in a UH-60 Blackhawk after arriving at US Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaeck, South Korea. Photo: AFP

Yet the former oil executive had little new to offer on the policy front. “We look to China to fulfil its obligations,” he said. Like his predecessors, Tillerson appears to think that if only he can enlist Beijing’s support, then US-backed economic sanctions can compel Kim to give up his nuclear arsenal.

This approach is no more likely to succeed now than at any other time since the mid-1990s, when Kim’s father first began launching missiles in the direction of Japan.

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Firstly, it is doubtful how much diplomatic influence Beijing really wields in Pyongyang. Certainly North Korea is not the obedient client state of China that US President Donald Trump’s campaign statements allege. Kim has yet to make an official visit as North Korea’s leader to Beijing, and has never met China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平).