The US president is “wrong” in assuming that China can handle the North Korean crisis single-handedly, Chinese state media says, responding to Donald Trump’s remarks accusing China of “doing nothing” for the US over Pyongyang.
“Trump is wrong in his assumption that Beijing can single-handedly settle the matter. As Beijing has said, repeatedly, it does not have the kind of ‘control’ over Pyongyang that the US president believes it does,” China Daily newspaper wrote in an editorial.
Beijing won’t accept allegations that it “has done nothing” to solve the crisis on the Korean Peninsula, the paper adds.
“From Beijing's perspective, it has significantly increased the pressure on Pyongyang by doing everything the strengthened UN sanctions regime requires of it.”
The daily criticized Trump’s “frustration at what he considers Beijing's failure to dissuade” North Korea from taking a nuclear path.
“Beijing has every reason to feel unfairly burdened with a task that is obviously beyond it, especially as it has been working diligently to broker a peaceful resolution to the crisis.” The experience with the North Korean crisis shows that no country can solve such a problem alone, the newspaper concludes.
“Pyongyang's right to develop nuclear capabilities aside, its constant saber-rattling cannot but be taken as a dangerous threat to all, including China, which feels threatened by the damage Pyongyang's nuclear weapons ambitions may inflict on its immediate neighborhood.”
The editorial is an apparent response to Trump’s remarks on Twitter on Sunday, in which he says that Beijing can “easily” solve the problem on the peninsula.
In the recent statement concerning the situation on the Korean peninsula, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson echoed Trump and once again voiced Washington’s long-standing position that China should pressure its neighbor to halt its nuclear ambitions. The United States and China share the same objective, a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, the US diplomat said, claiming that “only the North Koreans are to blame for this situation.”
Tillerson also said that Washington does not seek regime change in North Korea and at some point would like to have a dialogue with Pyongyang to de-escalate the tensions in the region.
On Saturday, after North Korea claimed it launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a statement, saying that Beijing opposes Pyongyang’s “launching activities.”