Chinese officials continue to supply North Korea with needed supplies such as oil and promise to give the dictatorial regime on its northeast border more nuclear missiles, according to a secret government document obtained by an American journalist and published Tuesday by the Washington Free Beacon.
“The document, labeled ‘top secret’ and dated September 15 — 12 days after North Korea’s latest underground nuclear blast — outlines China’s plan for dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue,” according to WFB’s national security reporter, Bill Gertz.
“It states China will allow North Korea to keep its current arsenal of nuclear weapons, contrary to Beijing’s public stance that it seeks a denuclearized Korean peninsula. Chinese leaders also agreed to offer new assurances that the North Korean government will not be allowed to collapse, and that Beijing plans to apply sanctions ‘symbolically’ to avoid punishing the regime of leader Kim Jong-un under a recent U.N. resolution requiring a halt to oil and gas shipments into North Korea.”
In return, China only asked North Korea to halt its current nuclear testing program, while waiting for times to become “ripe” to make genuine moves toward “denuclearization.” In the context of Beijing’s assurance that it will not allow the North Korean regime to collapse, such denuclearization might mean nothing more than China promising massive retaliation in the event the regime is attacked.
“Your department should at the same time seriously warn the Korean authority not to overdo things on the nuclear issue,” the document said. “Currently, there is no issue for our country to forcefully ask Korea to immediately and completely give up its nuclear weapons.
“Instead, we ask Korea to maintain restraint and after some years when the conditions are ripe, to apply gradual reforms and eventually meet the requirement of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.”
Gertz said he obtained the Chinese government document “from a person who once had ties to the Chinese intelligence and security communities. An English translation can be found here.”
Public exposure of the document will almost certainly draw an angry response from President Donald Trump.
Gertz was unable to secure comment from either the U.S. CIA or the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Public exposure of the document will almost certainly draw an angry response from President Donald Trump, who has previously touted his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump said last year that he had been “going easy” on China.
Senior editor Mark Tapscott can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.
(photo credit, homepage image: Nukes, CC BY-SA 3.0, by R.P Piper; photo credit, article image:
DF-5B Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, CC 0, by Voice of America)
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