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Trump gambles by dangling trade as bait for China to press North Korea

BEIJING — In a diplomatic gamble, United States President Donald Trump is seeking to enlist China as a peacemaker in the bristling nuclear-edged dispute with North Korea at the very moment he plans to ratchet up conflict with Beijing over trade issues.

US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, in April. Mr Trump has sought to leverage trade and North Korea with China for months, initially expressing optimism, but later growing discouraged that Beijing was not following through. Photo: Reuters

US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, in April. Mr Trump has sought to leverage trade and North Korea with China for months, initially expressing optimism, but later growing discouraged that Beijing was not following through. Photo: Reuters

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BEIJING — In a diplomatic gamble, United States President Donald Trump is seeking to enlist China as a peacemaker in the bristling nuclear-edged dispute with North Korea at the very moment he plans to ratchet up conflict with Beijing over trade issues.

Mr Trump spoke late on Friday with his counterpart, President Xi Jinping of China, to press the Chinese to do more to rein in North Korea as it races towards development of long-range nuclear weapons that could reach the United States. Mr Xi sought to lower the temperature after Mr Trump’s vow to rain down “fire and fury” on North Korea, urging restraint and a political solution.

But the conversation came as the Trump administration was preparing new trade action against China that could inflame the relationship.

The President plans to return to Washington today to sign a memo determining whether China should be investigated for intellectual property violations, accusing Beijing of failing to curb the theft of trade secrets and rampant online and physical piracy and counterfeiting. An investigation would be intended to lead to retaliatory measures.

A Trump administration official has insisted diplomacy over North Korea and the potential trade probe were “totally unrelated”, saying the trade action was not a pressure tactic.

“These are two different things,” the official said, speaking to reporters on a conference call. Mr Trump will direct US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to determine if an investigation is warranted of “any of China’s laws, policies, practices or actions that may be unreasonable or discriminatory, and that may be harming American intellectual property, innovation and technology”, the official said.

“China’s unfair trade practices and industrial policies, including forced technology transfer and intellectual property theft, harm the US economy and workers,” a second official said. “The action being taken on Monday is a reflection of the President’s firm commitment to addressing this problem in a firm way.”

Any investigation that may be launched could take as long as a year to conclude, a third official said. He said it would be premature to speculate on actions that could eventually be taken against China, and added that the issue could be resolved through “negotiated agreement”.

The White House had planned to take action on intellectual property earlier, but held off as it successfully lobbied China to vote at the United Nations Security Council for additional sanctions on North Korea a week ago.

Even now, the extra step of determining whether to start the investigation is less than trade hawks might have wanted, but softens the blow to China and gives Mr Trump a cudgel to hold over it if he does not get the cooperation he wants.

While past presidents have tried at least ostensibly to keep security and economic issues on separate tracks in their dealings with China, Mr Trump has explicitly linked the two, suggesting he would back off from a trade war against Beijing if it does more to pressure North Korea. “If China helps us, I feel a lot differently towards trade, a lot differently towards trade,” he told reporters last Thursday.

Mr Trump has sought to leverage trade and North Korea with China for months, initially expressing optimism after hosting Mr Xi in Florida, only to later grow discouraged that Beijing was not following through. The effort has reached a decisive point with the overt threats of US military action against North Korea — warnings clearly meant for Beijing’s ears.

China is widely seen as critical to any resolution to the nuclear crisis because of its outsized role as North Korea’s main economic benefactor. It accounts for as much as 90 per cent of North Korea’s total trade and supplies most of its food and energy while serving as the primary buyer of its minerals, seafood and garments.

But even though the effectiveness of the new United Nations sanctions depends largely on China’s willingness to enforce them, the Trump administration has failed to come up with enough incentives to compel China to do so, analysts said.

In their phone conversation on Friday night, Mr Xi stressed that it was “very important” for the two leaders to maintain contact to find “an appropriate solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula”, according to a statement carried in the Chinese state-run media. The language indicated China wants to push forward with a diplomatic proposal for North Korea that the Trump administration has brushed aside.

If Mr Trump was trying to move Mr Xi towards bolder action against the North, he did so while the Chinese leader is preoccupied with his own domestic political machinations, attending to a once-every-five-year political shake-up in the top ranks of the Communist Party. Mr Xi is believed to be at the beach resort at Beidaihe on the coast east of Beijing, where the leadership conducts a secretive retreat every summer, sometimes emerging casually dressed in open neck shirts and windbreakers for photographs on the strip of sand along the beachfront.

The final stages of the political process to win Mr Xi’s favour for a place on the standing committee of the party, now a seven-member body that makes the final decisions on the nation’s affairs, is underway among the resort’s villas and hotels, China’s political analysts said. The selection will be unveiled at a national congress in Beijing sometime between next month and November. Until then, almost all other matters, including foreign policy, are put on hold, the analysts said.

Still, the leadership has been vexed that the Trump administration has paid scant attention to China’s proposal for a “freeze for freeze” solution to North Korea.

Described often by China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the notion calls for North Korea to freeze its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programme at current levels in exchange for the US drawing down military exercises off the Korean Peninsula.

So far, Washington has dismissed the proposal as a nonstarter. Instead, to China’s irritation, the US is looking to increase missile defences in South Korea. In some respects, though, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has tried to please Beijing by pledging that Washington does not seek to overthrow the North Korean leader, and does not plan to send US troops north of the 38th parallel that divides North and South Korea.

Mr Xi is said to be exasperated with Mr Kim Jong-un, a leader much his junior, whom he openly disparaged during his meetings in Florida in April with Mr Trump, US officials say.

But despite the frustration with Mr Kim, China still prefers to have what it considers a relatively stable North Korea under Mr Kim, rather than a collapsed state that could result in a united Korean Peninsula on its border, with US troops in control.

In rebuffing the “freeze for freeze” proposal, Washington has raised suspicions in Beijing about its true intentions, said Ms Sun Yun, a China expert at the Stimson Centre in Washington.

Chinese leaders believe the US sees its true rival as China, a mammoth economy, and not North Korea, one of the poorest countries on earth, Ms Sun said. In this estimation, Washington is merely using North Korea to mount a military containment strategy around China, she said.

“The Chinese operate from the conviction that China remains and will always be the No 1 strategic threat to the US, so the issue of North Korea will be used against China — through sanctions, provocations, and everything else.” AGENCIES

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