Zhang Fei

Here's another aspect of Chinese assistance to North Korea that's not generally appreciated. The Chinese authors of "Unrestricted Warfare" recommend providing assistance to terrorists in order to cause problems for Uncle Sam. Now, this idea - based on the strategic principle that the enemy of your enemy is at least your temporary friend - isn't particularly new. What China has done is to combine this strategic principle with another one - having one barbarian fight another.

China is helping America's enemies get nukes, hoping to destabilize and wreck the existing defense treaties that protect its allies, while raising the possibility of a terrorist sucker punch with a nuke at an American military installation or city. And all without any means of directly tracing it back to the Chinese. They have plausible deniability, since they made the required disapproving noises about Kim to foreign reporters and diplomats, while (in the background) actually shielding him every step of the way from any negative consequences.

lwarmonger

North Korea lacks the ability to hit the United States in any meaningful way. And if North Korea goes up in a cloud of radioactive dust, China will get hurt far worse than the United States. The Chinese government doesn't particularly want a blatantly nuclear North Korea either.

Zhang Fei

First, for North Korea to hit the US would be too blatant, given that China has been shielding Kim from practical consequences for decades. Second, radioactive dust isn't such a big deal. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have triple and double their pre-atomic bomb populations. Chernobyl resulted in 47 deaths and 4,000 cancer cases. China has 1.3 billion people and its medical plan consists of the patients paying up front. Third, I understand that China says it doesn't want a nuclear North Korea, but all its actions vis-a-vis Kim are pointing the other way, notwithstanding the obligatory feigned outrage by Chinese officials.

nicolle'

I won't be so sure about these numbers. What many people forget is that those numbers was based upon the data given by soviet authoryties, wich everybody here on WAB agreed that they are not trustful at all. There are voices that claims there are in fact milions of casualties, not just direct deaths but also diformities, all sort of ills ,etc . And living near the border of Ucraine i think that they may be true.

Taihang

It could be the beginning of a conspiracy. But then the better option for China is to form an alliance with Japan.

fkevin

it's not benefit to china if NK has nuke. china needn't a dangerous partner beside her. our china needn't use this means to resolve the problem about TAIWAN or some other problems.