hankyoreh

Jan. 10 B-52 flight over the Korean Peninsula

China expressed its discomfort and concerns after a US B-52 strategic bomber flew over the Korean Peninsula.

China’s state-run Xinhua news service reported that the US deployment of a bomber to the skies above the Korean Peninsula on Jan. 10 made clear US intentions to show off its military muscle.

The Global Times, a nationalist-leaning English-language paper affiliated with China’s People’s Daily, also reported that the US had conducted a show of force aimed at the North Korean regime in Pyongyang.

A number of other Chinese media companies devoted coverage to the story, running a series of news bulletins about the flight of the B-52.

Chinese academics also accused the US of exploiting the North Korean nuclear issue as a strategic pretext for its rebalance to Asia.

“For the US to show off its military capacity with the deployment of a B-52 does nothing to help resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. After a previous North Korean nuclear test, the US dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Yellow Sea in a show of force and threatened North Korea, but this accomplished nothing,” said Lu Chao, researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Liaoning Province, during a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh.

“If anything, such US actions disturbed the regional military balance in Northeast Asia and made it more likely that a clash would occur. These are not wise actions,” Lu said. “The US is using North Korea’s fourth nuclear test as an excuse to increase its military presence in the Asia-Pacific region. China is cautious and concerned about this.”

“China harbors extreme concerns about American strategic assets visiting the Korean Peninsula, given their proximity to China,” said a diplomatic source in Beijing.

The Chinese appear to be concerned that the B-52 flight could be a signal that the US means to deploy strategic weapons on the Korean Peninsula.

After the B-52 flight, the Global Times reported, there has been an increasing push in South Korea for the deployment of the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missile defense system on the Korean Peninsula.

China believes that the US has ignored North Korea’s nuclear weapons and focused its efforts on building an alliance with South Korea and Japan in order to counter China.

“The US’s ‘strategic patience’ has exacerbated the North Korean nuclear issue. The US has increased security concerns by rejecting North Korean requests for a peace treaty,” Bi Yingda, a researcher at Shandong University’s Sino-South Korean Relations Institute, told [Hong Kong newspaper] Ta Kung Pao.

By Seong Yeon-cheol, Beijing correspondent

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