North Korea is going too far.... even for China

Until recent days China has rebuffed all U.S. and Japanese calls for more stringent sanctions against North Korea, in part weary of the consequences of a destabilized regime in Pyongyang. Perhaps even further to the point, China has in many ways been supportive of North Korea's missile testing, as suggested by Anne Applebaum in her recent op-ed:

Despite the risks, though, there are good reasons for the Chinese to prod Kim Jong Il to keep those missiles coming. By permitting North Korea to rattle its sabers, the Chinese can monitor President Obama's reaction to a military threat -- without having to deploy a threat themselves. They can see how serious the new American administration is about controlling the spread of nuclear weapons -- without having to risk sanctions or international condemnation of their own nuclear industry. They can distract and disturb the new administration -- without harming Chinese American economic relations, which are crucial to their own regime's stability. And if the game goes badly, they can call it off altogether.

While the Chinese are not quite yet willing to call if off altogether, there is reason to believe that they are growing increasingly frustrated by Kim's behavior. Not so much because it stands in clear defiance of attempted (though - if we're going to be perfectly honest - altogether meaningless) U.N. resolutions, but because an increasingly active North Korea will likely signal rapid military buildup in Japan, threatening stability in the region. North Korea's missile tests have also begun to step on the toes of the increasingly disgruntled Chinese leadership, leading one to believe that a change in Chinese policy may be nigh.

Zhu Feng's recent piece is the first sliver of evidence suggesting such a shift (or at the very least the possibility of one). The piece is significant not only for what it says, but also because of who is saying it: Zhu is a top dog in Beijing, serving as he does as the Deputy Director of the Center for International & Strategic Studies at Peking University. China, he writes, has long been of the opinion that North Korea's nuclear efforts was a negotiable item:

As long as its regime security and economic demands could be met, Pyongyang might be willing to give up its “nuclear car”. For the time being, it seems to me that all evidence points in the opposite direction. In fact, the recent nuclear testing by DPRK is not merely a slap in the Chinese face, but a sobering wake-up call for Chinese leadership to face up to the malign nature of their N. Korean counterparts.

This slap in the face may well "bring about the fundamental change of China's long-time policy of DPRK quickly." What this change will look like and what it will entail are not yet known. While I doubt that China will engage in measures such as the cutting off of oil and coal supplies, which would indubitably cripple the North Korean economy, it will find other ways to take a hard stand against North Korea's behavior. (Hopefully) it's just a matter of time. 

Note to China: sooner would be better than later.