Quick Take | Is US ignorant of the limits of Chinese influence over North Korea?

Confronted with a watershed moment in the rogue state’s efforts to develop a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the mainland United States, the American president’s confused reaction was to take to social media to demand China “end this nonsense once and for all”.

The delivery system Trump used to launch his first salvo in the latest crisis to engulf the Korean peninsula was predictable enough – Twitter. Likewise predictable was that in aiming at Beijing, rather than Pyongyang, he was, as usual, a few hundred kilometres off target.

This was no simple misfiring on Trump’s behalf – but the latest in a long line of potshots towards China that suggest the US president’s sights are permanently misaligned when it comes to North Korea.

In April, when Trump met the Chinese president, Xi Jinping ( 習近平 ), in Florida, the emergence of North Korea as a major topic was in many ways an unexpected development for the Chinese side. After all, the Korean peninsula had ranked rather low on the list of issues Trump had identified when campaigning for the presidency.

Mystery of the North Koreans who left Macau for Zhuhai

But even then, Trump’s intent was clear. As the pair sat down for dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the host’s announcement – reportedly over chocolate cake – that US forces were bombing Syria, a country that has enjoyed close ties to China in the past, spoke louder than anything else. The action was widely seen as a message, not only for North Korea, but for what the US sees as Pyongyang’s main ally – China.

That message was reinforced within a week after Xi’s return to Beijing, when Trump called him to discuss the issue once again.