Officials say that President Donald Trump is completing his plans to ensure that China gets involved in efforts to curb the threat coming from North Korea. Trump is to begin his 12-day visit to Asia this Friday and is schedules to meet China’s President Xi Jinping on Wednesday. According to senior administration officials, Trump has certain demands for Xi and will not hesitate to threaten the Chinese president should he decline to comply with them.
It is very likely that some of these demands include China imposing limits on oil export to and coal imports from North Korea, as China accounts for over 90 percent of all trade with North Korea. It is also speculated that Trump may call on China to urge the North Korean government to open talks with Washington concerning nuclear disarmament.
However, an ex-U.S. intelligence officer, who still serves as a White House informal adviser on Asian policy, said the administration is uncertain as to what can be accomplished during Trump’s visit to China. Experts, on the other hand, say the U.S. has several tools at their disposal, one of which is imposing additional economic sanctions on the regime. This, in turn, would cause poor North Korean refuges to flee to China, which would obviously pose an issue for Beijing, as well as a potential humanitarian crisis.
Trump could also renew his threat to limit China’s access to U.S. markets if it refuses to take a harder stance on the rogue dictatorship. Christopher Johnson, China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies believes the president will employ this approach.
Xi who recently won his second term in office called for “stable” relations with North Korea, which indicates that he may not be willing to accept the White House’s demands.
“I wish that under the new situation the Chinese side would make efforts with the [North Korean] side to promote the relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development,” he wrote according to the Korean Central News Agency.
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