From TIME Magazine
North Korea Isn’t Going to Stop Provoking Its Ally China Anytime Soon
By Charlie Campbell
Pyongyang keeps testing the patience of Beijing, its only friend on the international stage, because it can afford to
Super Bowl 50 had plenty of fireworks — most supplied by Beyoncé’s halftime performance, not by the rather sludgy game — but one part of the light show was unplanned. An hour after the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers on Sunday evening, North Korea’s Shining Star satellite was spotted some 300 miles above the Bay Area’s Levi’s Stadium, hurtling across the California sky.It was either the second or fourth successful satellite launch by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), depending on whether one believes Western observers or Pyongyang’s own pronouncements, respectively....
Yet if Shining Star was intended to be used against the U.S. and its regional allies like Japan, its launch also represented a hostile act toward North Korea’s chief and only ally, China. Beijing had dispatched veteran diplomat Wu Dawei on Feb. 2 to convince Pyongyang to postpone the launch. Yet not only was Wu unsuccessful, the launch was even brought forward by a day to coincide with Chinese New Year’s Eve — the country’s major holiday. This was “a slap in the face for Beijing,” says Steven Weber, an international-relations specialist at the University of California, Berkeley....
Beijing has no desire to jeopardize its unchallenged access to cheap North Korean minerals, such as gold, zinc, copper, nickel and rare-earth metals. “The North Korean regime is fully aware that it has the Chinese leadership over a barrel,” says Weber....