Does China really mind North Korea's Nukes?

A nuclear North Korea would...be useful to China in its Taiwan policy. To be sure, a nuclear test would cause Beijing, as broker of recent multiparty negotiations to end the nuclear standoff, to lose considerable diplomatic face. But North Korea also serves to neutralize the presence of American troops in South Korea, and a nuclear North Korea would accomplish this even better. "The main task now is 'opposing Taiwan independence'," [Shen Dingli, a political scientist at Shanghai’s Fudan University and one of China’s best known arms-control experts] writes. "In this respect, the DPRK at least puts in check the tens of thousands of US troops in South Korea and … helps China divide the military threat of the US military forces in the Asia-Pacific region."

That viewpoint echoes a historical perspective widely held by Chinese intellectuals—that the 1950-52 Korean War, which brought China and the United States into bloody combat, scuttled Chairman Mao's impending invasion of Taiwan. Preventing unity on the Korean Peninsula underscores China's persistent efforts to prop up North Korea economically, a practice Shen doesn't expect will cease even after a nuclear test north of the 38th parallel. "Our country only needs to symbolically take part in the sanctions that the international community will surely impose on the DPRK," he says.