Why China should reach out to the US to counter Kim Jong-un

Tom Plate says Beijing should follow up its stunning move to suspend North Korean imports with an overture to Washington, given its high stakes in the stability of the Korean peninsula

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Published: 5:21pm, 27 Feb 2017Updated: 7:01pm, 27 Feb 2017

The US and China need to work on the problem together – better, closer, sooner. Illustration: Craig Stephens

There is a time to be dainty and subtle, but this is not that time. There is a time to be blunt and brassy, and that time is now. The need for China and the United States to come together in a persistently adult geopolitical twosome has never been more urgent. Gamesmanship must be minimised. Statesmanship must be maximised.

Just ask career diplomat Ban Ki-moon. The other night in Los Angeles, he brought the point home well, as perhaps only someone who had scaled the heights to UN secretary general could. His venue was a hotel ballroom where the Pacific Century Institute, which works behind the scenes for peace and understanding between America and East Asia, presented Ban with its 2017 “Building Bridges” award, and Ban returned the compliment with a thoughtful discourse. Now in private life, this workaholic Korean, so respectful of the high office he was privileged to hold for a decade, was thus able to loosen up a bit on a subject dear to his heartburn: North Korea. And what the adoring audience got was a glimpse of Ban at his best.

By now, North Korea has ticked off almost everyone. That recent missile test-shot in the face of our new and unnervingly inexperienced US president unsettled many; the Kuala Lumpur airport assassination operation evidently orchestrated by Pyongyang turned stomachs all over the world. And so Ban laid it on the line: the young North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, is pushing his luck big time.

In a recent speech, former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said he believed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is pushing his luck. Photo: Bloomberg

This was not characteristic Ban, in public at least; and it had bite because the Korean diplomat, only the second UN secretary general from Asia, is known to know China and its leaders as well as anyone not Chinese. On the whole they like him, they respect him, and they supported him. For his part, Ban understands how they think and why they think it.

When poorly informed Western commentators and leaders unctuously pile on the cheap rhetoric and demand that “China do more”, as if it could push over unloved but nuclear-armed Pyongyang with a pair of chopsticks, Ban rolls his eyes. But they went wide open when the Xi Jinping (習近平) government announced the suspension of all North Korean imports, including even coal.