China’s Korea envoy accuses US of ‘using’ tensions to reinforce anti-Beijing alliance
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Special Representative of the Chinese Government on Korean Peninsula Affairs Liu Xiaoming said China is concerned about the US’ intentions.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
PARIS - China’s ambassador for the Korean peninsula has accused the US of “using” regional tensions to reinforce an anti-Beijing alliance, after weeks of mounting rhetoric and missile tests by Pyongyang.
“We are concerned about the US’ intention to use Korean peninsula issues as a tool for containing China,” Special Representative Liu Xiaoming told AFP in Paris on Friday, following a tour of some European capitals.
“It’s part of their Indo-Pacific strategy... to gang up (with) allies, to strengthen their alliance with (South Korea) and Japan,” he added.
Tensions have been rising over recent weeks across the Korean peninsula, with the North carrying out a string of missile tests South and its US ally have run large-scale military drills.
Beijing ally Pyongyang said on Friday it had successfully tested a solid-fuel ballistic missile,
In September 2022, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country ’s status as a nuclear power was now “irreversible”.
“People focus on the launches and nuclear tests of the DPRK, but they ignore the reason why they are doing this is a lack of a mechanism, a security structure” to guarantee peace on the peninsula, said Chinese envoy Liu.
DPRK, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is the official name of North Korea.
For their part, Washington and Seoul point to Mr Kim’s order to his army earlier this year to step up preparations for “real war” as justification for their own drills.
China pushes for a “dual-track” approach to ending North Korea’s nuclear drive, saying world powers should offer relief from UN Security Council sanctions in exchange for concrete disarmament steps.
Mr Liu also said that North Korean gestures during the Trump administration had not been met with such action from Washington.
“The message sent to the DPRK is still pressure, sanctions, confrontation, so that made dialogue impossible,” he said, casting doubt on the “seriousness” of US commitment to denuclearisation.
‘Strategic independence’
After talks in capitals including Berlin, Brussels and Paris, Mr Liu said European leaders should “persuade Americans to address the security concerns” of North Korea.
His call came days after French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated his ambition of “strategic independence”, setting Europe apart from both the US and China, a visit to Beijing.
Mr Macron’s comments were met with an outcry in other European capitals and in Washington, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We appreciate the independent strategy by some of the European countries,” China’s Mr Liu said. “I think it serves the interests of Europe.”
With China’s ambassador already back in Pyongyang after years of closed borders due to Covid-19, those European nations which previously had missions there “hope they can reopen the embassies and start exchanges with the DPRK”, he added.
‘No nuclear threats’
Mr Liu said that Russia remained a reliable partner pushing for denuclearisation in Korea, despite Moscow’s own nuclear sabre-rattling during its invasion of Ukraine.
“No threat of use of nuclear weapons” is China’s “consistent position”, he said.
Nevertheless, “China and Russia share a lot with regard to the Korean peninsula. We all work for peace and stability”, he added.
Mr Liu referred to official denials when asked whether reported North Korean arms deliveries to Russia in support of its invasion of Ukraine posed a problem for peace efforts on the peninsula.
Asked about a recent Financial Times report that businessmen based in Hong Kong and Macau were smuggling oil into North Korea in defiance of UN sanctions, Mr Liu said that China is “a responsible member of the (UN) Security Council” and “we certainly carry out our obligations fully” to enforce import restrictions.
On North Korean overseas workers – an economic lifeline for the regime barred under another UN resolution recently underlined by the US, South Korea and Japan – he said that “there’s no more such cases (in China)... that issue has been resolved”.
Mr Liu also acknowledged that North Korea is “faced with some difficulties” in its food supply after reports of shortages and a February call from Mr Kim to increase grain production, although he insisted the problems were “a result of sanctions”. AFP
