BEIJING — North Korea’s biggest nuclear test, conducted last week less than 50 miles from China, sent tremors through homes and schools in China’s northeast. But hours later, there was no mention of the test on China’s state-run television news, watched by hundreds of millions of viewers.
The decision on Friday to publicly ignore stark evidence of Pyongyang’s expanding nuclear capabilities illustrated the embarrassment that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, poses for his patrons in Beijing.
But although North Korea remains nearly 100 percent dependent on China for oil and food, Chinese analysts say that Beijing will not modify its allegiance to North Korea or pressure the country to curtail its drive for a full-fledged nuclear arsenal, as the United States keeps requesting.
“The United States cannot rely on China for North Korea,’’ said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.
China sees living with a Communist-ruled nuclear-armed state on its border as preferable to the chaos of its collapse, Shi said. The Chinese leadership is confident they would be able to control their neighbor by providing enough oil to keep the economy afloat.
The alternative is a strategic nightmare for Beijing: a collapsed North Korean regime, millions of refugees piling into China, and a unified Korean Peninsula under a US defense treaty.
The Obama administration’s decision to deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea also gives President Xi Jinping of China less incentive to cooperate with Washington, the analysts said.
Beijing interprets the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, as another US effort to contain China. The system serves to reinforce China’s view that its alliance with North Korea is an integral part of China’s strategic interests in Asia, with America’s treaty allies, Japan and South Korea, and tens of thousands of US troops close by, Shi said.
Washington insists the THAAD system, due to be installed next year, is intended to defend South Korea against North Korean missiles and is not aimed at China. The system “does not change the strategic balance between the United States and China,’’ President Obama said after meeting with Xi a week ago.
China is not convinced. Chinese officials argue that the THAAD radar can detect Chinese missiles on the mainland, undermining its nuclear deterrent.
So despite what Chinese analysts describe as the government’s distaste for Kim and his unpredictable behavior, China’s basic calculus on North Korea remains firm.
