China rejects Trump’s accusations over North Korea
By
Peter Symonds
2 October 2017
The Chinese government has hit back at the Trump administration over accusations that Beijing has failed to halt North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs. Following last Friday’s long-range missile test by Pyongyang, Trump tweeted he was “very disappointed in China.” He accused Beijing of doing “NOTHING for us with North Korea” despite a huge trade surplus with the US. “We will not allow this to continue,” he warned.
In unusually blunt language, an editorial this week in the state-owned Xinhua news agency declared that “emotional venting cannot become the guiding policy for solving the nuclear issue on the [Korean] peninsula.” It insisted that the US “must not continue spurning responsibility” for its confrontation with North Korea and “even less should it stab China in the back.”
The editorial continued: “Taking out this outrage on China is clearly finding the wrong target … What the peninsula needs is immediately stamping out the fire, not adding kindling, or even worse, pouring oil on the flames.” It warned that the tensions with North Korea could “evolve into a localised conflict, or even the outbreak of war, with unthinkable consequences.”
Beijing has opposed North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, out of deep concern that the US and its regional allies, especially Japan, have used them as the pretext for a military build-up in the Asia-Pacific that is primarily aimed against China. However, while imposing the UN’s tough sanctions on North Korea, China has been reluctant to accede to US demands for crippling measures. It fears that a political crisis in Pyongyang could create the conditions for Washington to launch a regime-change…