Business Insider: Here's what China might do if the US and North Korea went to war

Bilahari: First of all, we should understand China’s bottom line position on North Korea. The Chinese and the North Koreans have never loved each other, and mutual distrust has grown under Kim Jong-un, whose aggressive pursuit of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the continental US has diminished Chinese security – for example, through the deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Air Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea. [...]

There are, after all, only five Leninist states left in the world – China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and Laos. If the CCP is seen to be complicit in the destruction of a fellow Leninist state, that could – and indeed probably will – give the Chinese people very bad ideas about their own system. [...]

Question: What will China do if North Korea attacks the U.S.?

Nothing. Or nothing much. Some Chinese media – notably the Global Times – said, after Kim Jong-un had threatened to bracket Guam with missiles, that if North Korea started a war with the US, it was on its own. The Chinese know that a war with the US would jeopardise the most core of their core interests – namely, the preservation of CCP rule – because such a war cannot have a favourable outcome for China. [...]

The Trump administration’s approach to North Korea and its actions in other theatres, such as bombing Syria while President Trump dined with Xi Jinping, have done much to restore the credibility of American power. Indeed, President Trump has a valid point when he says that unpredictability is an asset. The US under Obama was far too predictable. [...]

China cannot replace the US as the leader of the current world order for the simple reason that in order to lead an open order, you must yourself be open. Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative is a bold and ambitious vision. But it is not a substitute for the current order because it plainly rests on the foundation of the current order. Can the initiative succeed if the world turns protectionist? Can it succeed if China gets into a trade war with the US?

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