Word: pyongyang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...summer of 2006, in the immediate aftermath of North Korea's unexpected long-range missile launch, the Chinese government quietly sent a senior envoy, former foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan, to Pyongyang to express Beijing's displeasure. Tang cooled his heels for a couple of days, before finally meeting - briefly, diplomatic sources have said - with leader Kim Jong Il. Just three months later, in October 2006, North Korea again defied the world and tested a nuclear bomb for the first time...
...Pyongyang has, in the past, made a habit of annoying China, its only ostensible ally in the world, what must Beijing be thinking now? For most of the past six years, Beijing has been the host and chief promoter of the so-called six-party talks. Their explicit goal: to get North Korea to give up its nuclear-weapons program. When the North launched another long-range ballistic missile in early April, Beijing helped promote the fig leaf at the U.N. Security Council that the rocket carried a communications satellite and thus might not be a direct violation...
...while Pyongyang and Beijing have never been as close as the propaganda would have it, the two countries do have shared interests. It's how much weight to give those interests, relative to the costs of supporting Pyongyang internationally, that vexes Beijing's leadership. Just as there have been tensions in Washington over how to handle the North - during the Bush Administration, those favoring a harder line prevailed at first, before the State Department's "negotiate now, negotiate forever" camp took over - so, too, are there conflicting opinions in Beijing over what to do. As described by a diplomatic source...
...costs to Beijing of kicking the North Korea can down the road by negotiating endlessly within the six-party talks were, with Washington's support, minimal. But now Beijing has plainly lost face; as Romberg says, it has probably been humiliated by Pyongyang. That's why diplomats in the region say there may be hope that the U.N. Security Council might seriously up the ante. Beijing's initial, tepid reaction to Monday's blast - waiting several hours before issuing a statement "condemning" the test - has been toughened, and discussions at the Security Council about possible sanctions are now under...
...North Korean leadership - precisely because not doing so would have cost them access to the U.S. and international capital markets. "Again, it was a cost-benefit choice for them, and in that case, it was clear the costs were much worse than the benefit of standing by Pyongyang," says a former U.S. intelligence official. Washington ultimately dropped those sanctions in lieu of a diplomatic effort to entice North Korea to give up its nukes...