Reader Opinion: A course for China

The last half-century has seen many twists and turns which have afforded many lessons and learnings.

Populations and policies have grown and expanded into what may be a more finite sphere of accommodations. Pressures are exerting themselves to extend perhaps beyond the scopes of reliable containments.

North Korea continues to be a burr in the backside and which has eluded many, if any, successes in playing nice. Some posit it less a question of if, but of when.

And if when, then what?

While rogue conflagrations by North Korea and its dynastic leader’s dynamics are our problem, they are more China’s responsibility; as it’s longtime “client state.”

Yes, Russia contributed some initial inertia early on to that errant political offspring and its own brand of communism and authoritarian rule. But it is China that may be found more culpable of not curtailing and containing its philosophical and geographic ward.

China’s check on North Korea could clear the bank, where Russia’s would bounce.

And who does North Korea threaten? More South Korea, the U.S and Japan — and, it seems, not China at all. And what if it did threaten China? I suspect that move would engender a “pushback” on a measure of magnitude multiplied.

China has a presence all over the globe and wishes to recast itself less in the radical Mao image and better in the more business-oriented Deng or Xi personas.

The spillover from a messy nuclear attack by North Korea on anyone, I suspect, has been “war-gamed” by all of the players and China identified as an indemnifier.

China could get in front of this and better assure themselves an ascendant sun in an eyes-on world by better beating back a bully, taking in and normalizing North Korea rather than taking on Taiwan.

It’s just business.

Philip L M Vaughan

Lake Edward Township