Tillerson visits China to pile pressure on North Korea
US secretary of state Rex Tillerson met China’s foreign minister in Beijing yesterday to discuss efforts to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and prepare for president Donald Trump’s visit next month.
Mr Tillerson, whose arrival was delayed because of technical problems with his plane in Tokyo, was greeted by the foreign minister, Wang Yi, at the Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen Square.
The visit came as relations between the two superpowers appear to be improving after months of tensions over how to handle North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s nuclear provocation.
“At present, China-US relations overall have a positive momentum and have arrived at an important opportunity to progress further,” Mr Wang said. Mr Trump’s visit, he said, would be a “major event in US-China relations”.
Mr Tillerson told Mr Wang that he looked forward to an exchange “on issues important to us and in particular to begin the important work to prepare for the upcoming visit of president Trump”.
They did not mention North Korea in their public remarks but the topic was expected to be on the agenda.
The US diplomat was also scheduled to meet with president Xi Jinping after talks with senior official Yang Jiechi, who is the director of the foreign affairs leading group and state councillor.
Mr Tillerson had been due to arrive on Friday evening but his aircraft’s problems forced him to travel to China on a military transport plane yesterday.
Mr Trump has repeatedly urged Mr Xi to exert more economic pressure on Pyongyang to convince the government to give up its nuclear ambitions.
China, North Korea’s main trade partner, has responded by backing a slew of United Nations sanctions.
For its part, Beijing has insisted that the sanctions must be coupled with efforts to organise peace talks, but Mr Trump and Mr Kim have traded increasingly personal insults that have raised fears that the crisis could spark a conflict.
“There appear to be two trains of thought in the international community regarding denuclearisation of the peninsula: Crush North Korea or talk to North Korea so as to increase its sense of security. China and Russia hold the latter view,” China’s state-run Global Times newspaper said in an editorial.
The acting US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, Susan Thornton, told US politicians before Mr Tillerson’s trip that China appeared to be on board with the plan to squeeze Pyongyang. “We are working closely with China to execute this strategy and are clear-eyed in viewing the progress – growing, if uneven – that China has made on this front,” she said. “We have recently seen Chinese authorities take additional actions,” she said, referring to new controls on the cross-border trade and finance that is North Korea’s economic lifeline.
On Thursday, China said it was ordering North Korean companies on its territory to close by January. The announcement came days after China confirmed it would limit exports of refined petroleum products to North Korea from today while banning imports of textiles from its neighbour.
The measures were in accordance with UN sanctions that were approved last month after North Korea detonated its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb – a test that triggered an earthquake felt across the border in China.
Mr Trump’s November tour will include Japan and South Korea.