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No trump: Playing the
China card in North Korea

Locked into its own overly zealous, simplistic and dogmatic world view, it's no wonder that the Bush administration's hope to play the China card to contain North Korea's nuclear development has yielded no result.

The United States assumed that the denuclearization of North Korea was in both the America's and China's interest. Clearly, a nuclear-free Korean peninsula would enhance America's security interests and protect markets in Northeast Asia. Even though China doesn't especially want to see a North Korea capable of launching nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, it has little incentive to help the United States.

As much of a nuisance as its little socialist brother can be, the maintenance of the North Korean regime provides China with a valuable buffer, putting the 32,000 U.S. troops in South Korea 200 miles farther away from China's border.

This is especially important to China since it harbors deep fears that the United States is trying to encircle it by building relations with Central Asian republics, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Vietnam and Mongolia. Not to mention strengthening the U.S. military relationship with Japan and renewing support for Taiwan.

Since the early days of the People's Republic of China, Chinese foreign policy has generally adhered to the Five Principles of Peaceful Co- Existence, which emphasize mutual non-interference in another country's internal affairs.

China sympathizes with North Korea. China will not take any action that will weaken the North Korean government or make it appear to be party to regime change. North Korea was created with the sacrifice of 500,000 Chinese soldiers who fought American and United Nations troops to a standstill during the Korean War. While China has adapted many free market practices, it was not all that long ago that it found itself in an economic situation similar to North Korea's. China is more open than in the past, but like North Korea, it is still one of a few remaining communist countries.

Bush administration foreign policy has shunned negotiation and been raucously insistent on achievement of one-sided U.S. policy objectives. At the same time the United States is demanding Chinese help with North Korea, it has done little to satisfy strong Chinese demands to limit U.S. support for Taiwan, continues to call for Chinese currency revaluation and persists in promoting human rights issues. All of which are clearly important, but should take a second seat to American national security and be negotiated in a more constructive bilateral fashion.

Living in Hawaii, the closest state to Korea, our security should be of growing concern. The administration has been playing a bad hand: The China card isn't going to trump North Korea.

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