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US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (left)

During the US and China’s first bilateral diplomacy and security dialogue, which was held in Washington on June 21, the two countries agreed to stop domestic companies from doing business with North Korean individuals and companies who are targeted by UN Security Council sanctions. The US government had recently started to harbor doubts about China’s willingness to put pressure on North Korea, but the US seems to have once again brought China to heel.

The US was represented in the meeting by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis while China was represented by State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Gen. Fang Fenghui, chief of the Joint Staff Department of the People’s Liberation Army. The meeting followed an agreement reached during the US-China summit in April. It was unprecedented for the two countries’ top diplomats and defense officials to come together for a meeting.

“We reaffirmed our commitment to implement in full all relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” Tillerson said during a press conference after the meeting, offering as a prime example the ban on transactions with North Korean companies being sanctioned by the UN Security Council. This issue had been a bone of contention since before the meeting, following reports that the US government had asked China to stop “illegal” business with North Korea by more than 10 Chinese companies and individuals. While the Chinese government has denied accusations about illegal dealings by some of the 10 Chinese companies identified by the US, during the diplomacy and security meeting it appears to have indicated that it is willing to cooperate as much as possible. China seems to have concluded that this would be preferable to an American “secondary boycott” that would slap sanctions on normal business dealings as well.

The two sides disagreed on the specifics of resolving the North Korean nuclear issue. “We reiterated to China that they have a diplomatic responsibility to exert much greater economic and diplomatic pressure on the North Korean regime if they want to prevent further escalation in the region,” Tillerson said, putting pressure on China. China countered this by putting the focus on negotiations, asserting that its proposals of “dual progress” and “dual suspension” have gained the support of the international community and that related countries need to proactively embrace these. China has proposed moving forward with the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula as well as negotiations for a North Korea-US peace treaty, and it has also called for simultaneously suspending North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile provocations and the South Korea-US joint military exercises.

In regard to the THAAD missile defense system, China also said it had “reiterated its opposition to the US deploying the system in South Korea and asked for the deployment to be suspended and the system withdrawn.” Considering that Mattis declared during the press conference that “We will continue to take necessary measures to defend ourselves and our allies,” the US presumably communicated its intention to push ahead with the THAAD deployment.

During the press conference, Mattis, who is well-known for keeping his cool, showed emotion while referring to the death of American student Otto Warmbier: “We see a young man go over there healthy, and with a minor act of mischief, come home dead, basically die [. . . ] immediately after he gets here. There is no way that we can look at a situation like this with any kind of understanding.”

The US-China diplomacy and security dialogue appears to have maintained the fairly amicable mood that formed during the US-China summit in April, without any major disagreements being expressed. It was confirmed that President Trump would pay a formal visit to China before the end of the year. In the area of national defense, it was agreed that the top defense officials from the two countries would visit each other as soon as possible and that the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would visit China as well. The US appears to have amped up its complaints about the issue of China’s construction and militarization of artificial islands in the South China Sea.

By Yi Yong-in and Kim Oi-hyun, Washington and Beijing correspondents

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