Opinion | As China feuds with the US, don’t expect it to encourage better behaviour from North Korea

Here’s a triangulation that’s rapidly getting more acute: China, North Korea and the United States. It’s not just that China is North Korea’s only real ally, its bulwark of defence since the Korean war. It’s also that China’s differences with the US are deepening with the indictment of its biggest smartphone maker for theft of US trade secrets, industrial espionage and money laundering.

And it’s also that the US is looking for ways to make a deal with North Korea that would tone down the hostility dating from the Korean war and promote reconciliation on the Korean peninsula.

The indictment of smartphone giant Huawei comes in the midst of a trade war between the US and China, on top of the contest for control of the South China Sea. Then there's China’s Belt and Road Initiative across the Himalayas through Pakistan to the Indian Ocean, and deepening claims to Taiwan.

All these factors give Chinese President Xi Jinping reason to intensify ties with North Korea while North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un plots to draw President Donald Trump into compromising the US alliance with South Korea at their upcoming second summit. In this three-sided game, US strategists are busy thinking of ways to get Kim to make concessions, pulling him away from China and towards serious rapprochement with the US and South Korea.