Kim shows Trump he has other options
BEIJING >> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has issued a veiled warning to President Trump with his surprise visit to China this week: He has other options for economic and diplomatic normalization if their rapprochement falters.
Kim and Trump are planning a followup meeting to their historic summit in Singapore in June. But there are misgivings on both sides about each other’s sincerity and commitment to improving their bilateral relations.
Against this backdrop, Kim, joined by his wife and an entourage of officials, arrived Tuesday in Beijing for his fourth summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in less than a year. He will remain here through Thursday, making this the longest of his trips.
It is the North Korean leader’s 36th birthday — a government spokesman declined to say whether there would be a party — but also the second day of talks between American and Chinese trade negotiators aimed at finding a way through their fractious trade war.
It was almost as if Kim and Xi had picked a date that would hammer home their messages to Trump most forcefully.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said it was just a coincidence. China had a “wonderful and rich” diplomatic schedule, so it was inevitable that events would sometimes overlap, he said. “It’s very normal for us to maintain friendly exchanges,” Lu said.
Xi has yet to visit North Korea. Analysts, however, saw a deeper significance in Kim’s arrival Tuesday.
“Kim Jong Un is not feeling confident about his second summit with Donald Trump, so he is trying to court his Chinese counterpart,” said Zhao Tong of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing. “This sends a message to the U.S. that, even if the U.S. does not cooperate, even if they keep the economic sanctions, North Korea can still do well with China’s support.”
The North Korean leader in fact said as much in his New Year’s Day speech last week.
“If the United States does not keep the promise it made in the eyes of the world and ... attempts to unilaterally enforce something upon us and persists in imposing sanctions and pressure against our republic,” Kim said, “we may be compelled to find a new way for defending the sovereignty of the country.”
The threat could be read two ways: that North Korea could return to aggressively developing its nuclear weapons program, or that it could find other countries to work with.
For his part, Xi appears eager to make progress to resolve the trade war between China and the United States. The dispute has been rumbling on for nine months, and during that period China’s economy has begun to slow sharply. Independent economists expect the growth rate to decelerate to about 6 percent this year, the slowest since 1990.
Reminding Trump that he can be helpful when it comes to dealing with North Korea could be a way for Xi to broker a better trade deal, analysts said.
“This could undermine the United States’ coercive leverage over North Korea,” said Zhao of Carnegie-Tsinghua. “This would make the U.S. nervous. Washington would hate seeing China having a much closer relationship with North Korea and therefore having much greater regional influence.”
It was the American president who first made this connection. During the early days of the trade war, Trump repeatedly suggested that tariffs could be slapped on China if it did not do everything in its power to rein in its errant neighbor. More than 90 percent of North Korea’s trade goes to or through China, giving Xi enormous leverage over Kim.
North Korea has long resented China’s influence over it, and Kim had been trying to reduce its dependence on its much larger neighbor by diversifying markets within the constraints of the sanctions.