The New York Times
BEIJING — When veteran Chinese diplomat Wu Dawei left for North Korea last week, he probably knew he had been dispatched on mission impossible: to persuade the country's young leader, Kim Jong Un, to climb down from his threat to launch a rocket as part of his quest to develop ballistic missile technologies.
Not only did Kim ignore China's entreaties, sending Wu home empty-handed. He did so emphatically, ordering the launch a day earlier than expected so that it fell on one of China's most important holidays, the eve of the Lunar New Year.
It is unclear how long President Xi Jinping of China will tolerate what some analysts here are calling the humiliation of his country at the hands of a capricious Kim. But there are no immediate signs that Beijing will radically change course and turn away from its traditional ally.
"It's a bad result, it's a humiliation," said Cheng Xiaohe, an associate professor of international relations at Renmin University. "I think Kim Jong Un made many mistakes, and this is one of his major mistakes." Even so, he added, "It's hard to say what different approach China will take."
North Korea said Sunday that the rocket had successfully put a satellite into orbit. South Korea's National Intelligence Service said the launch indicated that North Korea had made some technological advances toward its assumed goal of pursuing an intercontinental ballistic missile. The satellite launched Sunday weighed 440 pounds, twice as heavy as a satellite launched in 2012, according to lawmakers who attended a closed briefing by the spy agency Sunday.
The U.N. Security Council, at an emergency meeting Sunday requested by the United States and Japan, issued a statement signaling its intention to stiffen penalties against North Korea but without saying how or when. A draft Security Council resolution is under negotiation, diplomats said. The key is what China will allow in terms of tightening or broadening sanctions.
Hours after the launch, the Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed "regret" and counseled calm and cautious action, a tone that drew immediate ridicule from users of the Chinese social media site, Weibo.
In contrast to calls from South Korea, Japan and the United States Sunday for tougher sanctions against North Korea, China said early dialogue — meaning the resumption of talks among major powers and North Korea — was its preferred way to rein in Kim. Those negotiations, led by China and known as the six-party talks, fell apart in 2009 after North Korea walked out.
In response to the Foreign Ministry's statement, one person on Weibo said: "I feel 'regret' for the Foreign Ministry."
Another user said: "I have been racking my head but I simply can't figure out why we have to offend everybody in the world to defend a rogue regime."
Popular sentiment in China, where Kim has been maligned online as overweight, bumptious and inexperienced, appears to run against the government's public patience with the North Korean leader.
In a poll on Weibo conducted Friday and Saturday, two-thirds of the 8,000 respondents said they supported a strike by the United States to destroy North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Eighteen percent of those interviewed said they were against such a strike, and 16 percent said they were neutral.
In a telling signal of official disapproval of the results, Chinese censors had deleted the poll by Sunday afternoon.
Despite its frustration with Kim and frosty personal relations — Xi has refused to meet with Kim — China will probably continue to put up with his behavior, said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University.
China is afraid of turning its recalcitrant ally into a worrisome enemy, he said.
The government has opposed severe sanctions aimed at curtailing the amount of oil that China exports to North Korea and at stopping imports of mineral resources. So far, China has supported only sanctions that limit the transfer or sale of military equipment or other items that would help North Korea's weapons program.
"China thinks more severe sanctions will reduce China's influence in North Korea," Shi said.
Most important, China was afraid that hammering North Korea with heavy sanctions would turn it into a hostile country that could "take action" against Beijing, Shi said.
Xi has made the calculation that Kim, the third generation of the Kim family to rule North Korea, would be an enduring figure, and he sent Liu Yunshan, a member of the powerful Standing Committee of the Communist Party, to a military parade in Pyongyang in October to make a kind of rapprochement, Shi said.
China even appeared to be willing to risk its budding relationship with South Korea, an ally of the United States, by putting up with North Korea's bad behavior.
The rocket launch Sunday, which came after a fourth nuclear test by the North Koreans in early January, showed that China's goal of maintaining good relationships with both North Korea and South Korea was an extremely difficult balancing act, Cheng said.
Xi has gone out of his way to court the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, by stressing the strong economic relationship between the two countries. China is South Korea's biggest trading partner, and Park raised eyebrows among Washington officials in September by turning up at a huge military parade on Tiananmen Square in Beijing that was boycotted by Western leaders.
In a move sure to displease China, South Korea's Defense Department said hours after the launch Sunday that it would start formal discussions with the United States about the deployment of a missile defense system known as THAAD, for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense.
China has vigorously opposed the deployment of the system, arguing that it would be used by the United States to interfere with China's defenses and as a tool to contain China.
The North Korean rocket launch "is aimed at advancing its nuclear weapons and their delivery missiles," Park said. "North Korea poses a grave challenge to the peace of Northeast Asia and the rest of the world by rejecting dialogue and persisting in advancing its missiles for the sake of regime survival."
Maj. Gen. Kim Yong-hyun, head of operations at the South Korean military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, also said that Seoul and Washington had agreed that their annual joint springtime military exercises, code-named Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, would be the largest ever this year.
He said that South Korea would deploy more propaganda loudspeakers along the border with North Korea and operate them for longer hours. South Korea switched on the long-dormant loudspeakers after the January nuclear test, and North Korea responded by sending balloons into the South to drop propaganda leaflets and trash.
In recent years, South Korea has aggressively courted closer ties with China, hoping it would help tame North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
The mood shifted in South Korea, however, after the nuclear test in January. China, North Korea's only major trading partner, rejected repeated South Korean and U.S. demands that it force the North to give up its nuclear-missile program by squeezing oil and other shipments.
President Barack Obama and Xi spoke by telephone last week about the need for unified action regarding sanctions at the United Nations, the White House said.
But the agreement between the two leaders in California in 2013, when cooperation on finding a solution to the North Korea dilemma was the high point of their meeting, appears to have evaporated.
When Secretary of State John Kerry held more than four hours of talks with the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, last month in Beijing, there was little enthusiasm for more targeted sanctions by the Chinese, even though both sides knew that a rocket launch was likely to happen, U.S. officials said.
"The general relationship between the United States and China is far from good, and I don't think the U.S. has any real bargaining chips with China over North Korea," Shi said. "The vital interest of the United States is to reduce the nuclear weapons, and the vital interest of China is to keep a minimum degree of stability and to keep North Korea a friend."
Under various Security Council resolutions, North Korea is banned from rocket launches using ballistic missile technology. But it has touted its missiles and nuclear weapons as the "sacred sword" its people have long sought to deter U.S. invasions. On Sunday, it called the satellite "a gift of most intense loyalty" for Kim.