I read 20 times a day that North Korea is a puppet of China. All the really smart posters say so. Well, I mean, the ones that write a line or two about North Korea being a puppet of China, but don't offer any analysis or understanding of the situation. They write it all the time, so they must be right, right?
Either that, or Kim Jong Il is just annother cunning, backstabbing tyrant who doesn't care what he has to do in order to remain in power. If that's the case, then it would be in his interest to intimidate China in the same way he's intimidating everyone else. The CCP has a lot to lose, and are deathly afraid of serious threats to Chinese stability or economic progress. That would mean that China would much rather block sanctions and pay what in effect is tribute, rather than do the right thing, when it may come at a steep cost.
The DPRK realizes that they're not dealing with Mao Zedong, but a pack of penny pinching bureaucrats. Intimidation a much more effective a tool against a committee of pencil pushers who don't want to rock the boat, than it is a powerful, egotistical revolutionary fighter. China is not in a desperate situation, but North Korea is. That fact makes it in the interest of China to do whatever they can to keep North Korea afloat, because if it collapses, China will have to clean up the mess.
That mess could involve a failed state on their border, with millions of refugees, loose WMDs, marauding former North Korean military units looking for food, and eventually, U.S./USFK forces parked on the Yalu/Heilongjiang river. (That's about a day and a half of M1A1 tank driving to Beijing, closer than Kuwait City is to Baghdad.)
But, North Korea is a puppet of China. I read it here on FR, so it must be true.
I like your points. I hear people expressing frustration that we should have done something or China should have done something or Russia ... I tend to think that the Kimster would have done what he did no matter what others did and there was nothing of a practical nature that any of us could have done about it.
Actions do speak louder than words. Some of us keep a sharp memory of that Chinese shipment of 20 tons of tributyl phosphate to North Korea.
As to the threat of 20 million starving NK refugees, they'll do everything possible, moral or otherwise, to keep them on the wrong side of the Yalu and make it our problem.
One thing we need to keep in mind while China is responding to the current crisis is that an event like N. Korean nuclear test affects power struggle inside Chinese leadership. China no longer has monolithic leader like Deng Xiao-ping or Mao Zedong who towers over everybody else. It is ruled by collective leadership made up of multiple factions, in which Hu Jintao has a little more power than other Politburo members. Everytime something like this happens, some factions are on the offensive, and others are put on the defensive.
The nuclear test is a drastic event which could visibly shift power balance inside Politburo, not just temporary jostling among factions. Lately, Chinese media are wide-open to criticize N. Korea. I think that some folks on the top let this floodgate open to get at their political enemies.
High stake's game is being played not only in Pyongyang but also in Beijing.
Putin would not like to see US forces that close to Vladvostok either.