Grim Chinese views of N. Korea suggest rethink

Since North Korea conducted a second nuclear test on May 25, China has mostly stuck to its customary even-handed rhetoric on the dispute, but its officials, including a senior military officer, have been pointedly open in their worries about their much smaller neighbour.

Bleak commentary on North Korea has also multiplied in the government-controlled press, some of it going well beyond the usual official rhetoric.

“Judging from current trends, I believe a military conflict could well break out on the Korean Peninsula, first at sea and then possibly pushing towards the 38th Parallel,” Zhang Liangui, an expert on North Korea at the Central Party School in Beijing, wrote this month in a Chinese-language magazine, World Affairs.

The 38th Parallel is the line of latitude dividing North and South Korea.

Zhang said fresh international sanctions against North Korea are unlikely to work unless backed by the threat of force.

“In North Korea, economic and political sanctions cannot influence the concrete interests of its decision-makers. Only sanctions against North Korea backed by force will get enough attention from it,” he wrote in the magazine, which is sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Such talk may presage a tougher stance towards the hermit state on China's doorstep, partly narrowing a policy gap with Washington and its allies, several experts said.

Other recent assessments in China's press have branded the six-country nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea — hosted by Beijing but now in the deep freeze — an outright failure.

China's news media are not always an unfailing mirror of the leadership's thinking, but the openly worried discussion of the North marks a shift — especially in a year when the two countries are supposed to be celebrating 60 years of official friendship.

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