At the center of the North Korean nuclear crisis is a pivotal question:
How much is China really willing to pressure and punish its longtime
ally in Pyongyang? Recent conversations in Beijing and Washington
suggest that Chinese leaders have decided to increase pressure
substantially but are not—and probably never will be—willing to help
President Trump strangle North Korea into submission. China doesn’t
trust Kim Jong Un—but it trusts Trump even less.

For decades, China backed North Korea in hostilities with the United
States. The fellow Communist armies had fought alongside one another in
the Korean War, and North Korea still relies on China for as much as
ninety per cent of its overseas trade. In Chairman Mao’s analogy, the
two nations were as close as “lips and teeth.” But that is no longer
true; since taking power, in 2011, Kim Jong Un, who is suspicious of
China’s efforts to control North Korea or spur it to follow its model of
economic reform, has openly antagonized the government in Beijing,
including launching rockets that would embarrass the Chinese leadership.
(Earlier this month, Kim fired a rocket just as Xi Jinping, the Chinese
President, was opening an annual summit of developing countries in the
Chinese city of Xiamen.)

By several measures, Chinese leaders have become more willing to get
tough with Kim. Until recently, Chinese intellectuals rarely questioned
China’s commitment to North Korea. But, in March, Shen Zhihua, one of
China’s best-known experts on the Korean War, said, in a speech, “We
must see clearly that China and North Korea are no longer brothers-in-arms, and in the short term there’s no possibility of an improvement in
Chinese-North Korean relations.” The speech circulated widely, without
much in the way of official censorship—a sign, to many Chinese analysts,
that some of the country’s leaders agree.

When I met Shen last month, in Beijing, he told me, “I think more and
more leaders share this view. At a minimum, they think that multiple
views should exist.” Shen is a calm, silver-haired scholar who works in
a research center at East China Normal University, in Shanghai. As a
historian, he believes that long-standing tensions between Beijing and
Pyongyang are becoming irreparable. “Officially, they tried to paper
over the cracks, but the differences were inevitable,” he said.

Shen does not speak for the leadership or advise powerful officials.
Rather, his views should be understood as a reflection of the change
that is under way in the Chinese establishment. Of North Korea, he said,
“I think China doesn’t care who is running the country. Xi and Kim have
not met. It used to be a tradition if there is a new leader, to meet
him. But not now.” Fundamentally, he said, some have come to believe
what was once anathema—that North Korea could one day turn its
aggression on China: “Many in China don’t want North Korea to have
nuclear weapons because nuclear weapons are, first, threatening to
China.”

I wondered if Shen was expressing a minority view. When I met Zhao Tong,
who specializes in nuclear issues as a fellow at the Carnegie–Tsinghua
Center for Global Policy, I asked him about Shen’s speech. “I think most
people would broadly agree,” Zhao said. “It’s not a warm relationship of
‘brothers.’ ” Given that North Korea has continued to test nuclear
weapons in the face of Chinese protests, he said, China would not feel
automatically compelled to defend North Korea under their
mutual-assistance treaty. “Most Chinese would laugh at the proposal that
China should provide security guarantees,” he said.

Zhao ticked off examples of China’s new pressures on Pyongyang: “China
has stopped coal imports. That’s a big step. It’s stopped supplying diesel
and gas. That’s a big step. It has tightened regulations on companies
and financial institutions, and the big ones have stopped doing business
with North Korea. It’s the smaller ones that are motivated by narrow
interests and are still doing business. China has enhanced inspections
of goods at the border. They made efforts to help private-sector
companies strengthen their export-control practices.”

But, importantly, Zhao added that it would be a mistake to misread those
steps as China signing on, wholesale, to American efforts to force North
Korea to the edge of collapse—a tactic, favored in Washington, known as
“strategic strangulation.” “No, it’s just balancing Trump and Kim Jong
Un,” Zhao said. “The reason China agreed to much tougher sanctions is to
calm Trump down.” China has strategic tensions of its own with the U.S.,
so it is keeping both countries off balance. “It’s basically, ‘Who is
the bigger evil?’ For China, the U.S. is always the top geostrategic
concern, the top threat.”

Zhao notes that the U.N. sanctions against North Korea that
were passed on August 5th, which China supported, stopped short of
seeking to undermine trade and humanitarian activities. “They are trying
to draw a line between North Korea’s military program and civilian
trade. To put more pressure on North Korea, without undermining it.
China has been taking the incremental approach,” he said. In Zhao’s
view, even though China has agreed to limit oil exports to North Korea,
it is unlikely to cut them off entirely, which the Trump Administration
believes is a vital step to change Kim’s behavior. “If China remains the
sole supplier, meaning Russia won’t step in, I think China would find it
very hard to do that,” Zhao said.

There are hard limits to China’s willingness to advance American
interests in Asia, because the two powers have deep disagreements—about
trade, contested territory in the South China Sea, and Taiwan. As the
North Korea crisis has escalated, China has urged the U.S. to consider
offering North Korea a deal known as “freeze for freeze,” in which the
North would halt further tests if the U.S. halts or reduces joint
military exercises with South Korea and Japan—exercises that China
resents as well. “I think some Chinese are secretly hoping the North
Korean position can actually help drive the U.S. forces away from the
Korean Peninsula,” Zhao said. “It is in China’s interest if, in the
mid-to-long term, the North Koreans can have a deal with the United
States where the U.S. reduces troops or reduces its exercises.”

In recent years, overly hopeful U.S. politicians and commentators have
repeatedly misunderstood China’s views of North Korea and assumed that
Beijing was, at last, turning against its irksome ally. In private
meetings with President Obama, and later with President Trump, Xi has
repeated a bottom-line principle about North Korea: “No war. No chaos.
No nukes.” A former U.S. official, who was at several of those meetings,
told me, “Every American senior official that I know hears, ‘Blah, blah,
blah—no nuclear weapons.’ And thinks, ‘Oh, we agree! Excellent!’ So the
Chinese ought to be willing to limbo under this bar for us. But, no,
that’s third in the list of three strategic priorities. The first two
are avoiding war on the Korean Peninsula, and avoiding chaos and
collapse.” In that spirit, China has sought to limit the scope of
U.S.-backed sanctions in the U.N. Security Council. In the latest round,
earlier this month, China succeeded in forcing the U.S. to drop its
pursuit of a full oil blockade, which China fears would drive North
Korea to collapse.

Nothing worries Chinese officials more than the following scenario: the
U.S. uses harsh sanctions and covert action—and possibly military
strikes—to drive North Korea close to the point of regime collapse. In
turn, Pyongyang lashes out with violence against America or its allies,
sparking a full-blown war on China’s border, just as China is trying to
maintain delicate economic growth and social stability. Xi, in separate
sessions, has offered Obama and Trump the same Chinese adage in
reference to North Korea: “When a man is barefoot, he doesn’t fear a man
with shoes.” In other words, even if attacking America would be suicide
for North Korea, if it sees nothing left to lose, it just might do the
unthinkable. For that reason, China, above all, wants the U.S. to avoid
backing Kim into a corner from which he has no exit.

Trump is fervently seeking China’s coöperation, but, ironically, his
rhetoric and aggression may be putting that further out of reach. On
Sunday, Trump mocked Kim as the “Rocket Man.” Members of his
Administration have repeated their openness to “military options,”
despite projections that air strikes, or other attempts at targeted
attacks, could spark a wider war. Chinese intellectuals have taken to
joking that “Telangpu”—which is one of the Chinese pronunciations of
Trump’s name—sounds like “te meipu,” which means clueless or lacking a
plan. In recent months, Trump has alternately praised China and
threatened it with a trade war. “I don’t understand Trump,” Shen, the
historian, told me. “One day he is saying something good about Xi
Jinping and the next he is criticizing him. Trump is becoming more and
more of a problem. China is becoming more and more stable.”