Has China had enough of Kim's antics?

Scholars and government officials in China have begun to openly speculate that Chinese leaders have finally become fed up with Kim Jong-Il. From today's New York Times:

BEIJING, Oct. 19 — China is prepared to step up pressure on North Korea in coming weeks by reducing oil shipments, among other measures, if the country refuses to return to negotiations or conducts more nuclear tests, Chinese government advisers and scholars who have discussed the matter with the leadership say. ...

Several leading Chinese experts said senior officials had indicated in the past week that they planned to slap new penalties on North Korea going beyond the ban on sales of military equipment imposed by the United Nations. But they would be likely to hold off if Mr. Kim agreed to return soon to multilateral talks North Korea has boycotted since September 2005. Years of talks have produced meager results. ...

“China is going to have to make some crucial choices in the coming days,” said one senior international relations specialist who has participated in top-level discussions of the matter but asked to remain anonymous. “I think Chinese leaders are preparedto take a hard line, but Kim may be smart enough to try to divide China and the U.S.” ...

Chinese experts who have taken part in discussions about how to manage the situation said that after North Korea’s missile tests in July, Chinese leaders concluded that Mr. Kim might not negotiate a way out of the impasse unless he had no other choice. Officials felt badly stung by the nuclear test and have dug in their heels on ending the nuclear program there, the experts said. ...

"I believe that Chinese leaders are firmly resolved to roll back the nuclear program and not accept it as an accomplished fact,” said Zhang Liangui, a Korea expert at the Communist Party’s Central Party School in Beijing who has favored taking a tougher line.

“I do not think that the resolve of the Chinese leadership is going to be less than the resolve of the American leadership,” he said.

Others agreed, arguing that as long as the Bush administration kept its focus on a diplomatic solution, China would work to maintain solidarity with the United States.

“The only issue that they do not agree on is interdiction at sea,” said Xu Guangyu, a retired general who is now a member of the Chinese Arms Control and Disarmament Association, a government-sponsored institute. “For the most part the United States has responded to this with the right tone, so I don’t see a major obstacle to cooperation.” ...

“The people who were the most critical of Kim in the past were a minority,” said one scholar. “But they have a bigger voice now. The people who had the most favorable interpretations of Kim’s actions are for now keeping quiet.”

These are very positive developments, of course, and they serve to demonstrate that the diplomatic blundering here has been on the part of Kim Jong-Il, and to lesser degrees, the Chinese and South Koreans. It is increasingly clear that North Korea's nuclear test was a major miscalculation, one which has solidified the resolve of his neighbors to face down his threats and provocations through means that promise to grow in severity to meet the urgency of the crisis. In that respect, Kim's nuclear test rivals Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait as an act of diplomatic idiocy.

Kim's test has also illustrated the utter futility of the policies of appeasement which had previously been favored by the Chinese and South Koreans (and even by the U.S. under the Clinton administration). From the time he first stepped into his presidential platform shoes, Kim Jong-Il fully intended to develop nuclear weapons, irrespective of the opinions and entreaties of the international community. All the while, he eagerly accepted bribes from those who were persuaded by his propaganda, fearful of his wrath, or sympathetic to his regime's objectives.

Now that they are face-to-face with reality, you'd think that the appeasers - at least those who live here in America - would be burying their faces in the sands of a desert island somewhere, but they're not. They're still here and speaking more loudly than ever, blaming America for having failed to accept terms from a dictator who has intentionally starved his own people in order to build the weapons that now threaten millions of South Koreans and Japanese with annihilation. There's a fine line between appeasement and surrender; surrender may bring peace, but what will be the cost?