In this episode, we discuss China’s views of North Korea and its foreign policy towards the Korean Peninsula. Beijing has announced that it would suspend imports on North Korean coal for the rest of 2017 and has also voted in favor of tightening UN sanctions on North Korea. It examines growing frictions between China and North Korea and how this development might impact Chinese policy towards North Korea. Yun Sun helps to contextualize recent actions taken by the Kim Jong-Un regime in North Korea, including the latest missile tests and the assassination of Kim Jong-Nam, from the perspective of the Chinese government. Additionally, we examine China’s strategic thinking about the North Korean nuclear issue and look at how it might use diplomacy and coercion to shape the future of the Korean Peninsula
Yun Sun is a Senior Associate with the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center, where she specializes in Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations and China’s relations with neighboring countries and authoritarian regimes. She is also a nonresident fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution, focusing on China’s relations with Africa and U.S.-China cooperation on the continent. She was previously a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a China analyst for the International Crisis Group.