China is angry, but what can it do about North Korea?

Xi Jinping has few options to bring Kim Jong-un into line but he also has to
contend with the unpredictable Donald Trump

South Korea to approve US missile defence system live updates

Chinese President Xi Jinping has few easy choices when dealing with North
Korea. Photograph: Tyrone Siu/AP

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Tom Phillips in Beijing

Monday 4 September 2017 06.15 BSTLast modified on Monday 4 September
2017 09.54 BST

On Friday afternoon, the eve of North Koreas most powerful ever nuclear test,
Chinas football-loving president received a gift from the worlds greatest ever
player.

Good luck, read the handwritten message from Pel on a canary yellow
Brazil jersey handed to Xi Jinping by his South American counterpart, Michel
Temer.

Xi needs it. Experts say Kim Jong-uns latest provocation which some
believe was deliberately timed to upstage the start of the annual Brics summit
in China exposes not only the scale of the North Korean challenge now
facing Chinas president but also his dearth of options.
The Chinese are pissed off, quite frankly, says Steve Tsang, the head of the
Soas China Institute.

But there is nothing much they will actually do about it. Words? UN
statements and all that? Yes. But what can the Chinese actually do?

Zhao Tong, a North Korea expert from the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for
Global Policy in Beijing, believes there are a number of possible answers.

Sanctions or turning off the taps

The first is to further tighten sanctions on Kims regime by targeting its
exports of textiles and clothing.

After the last round of UN resolution sanctions, textile products and clothing
is now the most important source of foreign income for North Korea, says
Zhao.

Xi could also deprive Kim of another key source of revenue by agreeing to

limit or completely prohibit up to 100,000 North Korean labourers from
working overseas, including in China.

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A third and far more drastic option also exists: cutting off North Koreas crude
oil supply. This nuclear test is one of the few things that might trigger a cut-
off of oil supplies, but we are still very reluctant to do so, one person close to
Chinese foreign policymakers told the Financial Times after Sundays
detonation.

Zhao doubts Xi will choose that risk-strewn path. He believes turning off the
taps could prove an irreversible decision since the pipeline delivering oil to
North Korea is old and would corrode and break if left unused. Crucially,
though, it would cripple North Koreas economy, almost certainly bring down
Kims regime and create a massive refugee and security crisis just a few
hundred miles from Beijing.

That is one of the most radical measures China could ever take and it could
have strategic implications if the regimes stability is affected, says Zhao. It is
not going to be immediate but over time it could have an impact on the
regimes survival.
Cheng Xiaohe, a North Korea expert from Renmin University in Beijing, also
admits tightened sanctions are the only feasible response: China has been
pushed into a corner and has few options left.