Mick Hartley

I've already posted about North Korea's deteriorating relations with China as its Russian links grow ever stronger – first with the Chinese expelling North Korean garment factory workers, and then with the North Koreans seizing and firing on Chinese fishing boats. Now the BBC's Laura Bicker reports from a border town in China overlooking their troublesome neighbour:

“China seeks a relationship with a reasonable, high level of control over North Korea,” says Christopher Green, an analyst from the International Crisis Group. “And North Korea’s relationship with Russia threatens to undermine that.”

If Chinese leader Xi Jinping is unable shape the Putin-Kim alliance to suit his interests, China may well remain stuck in the middle as western anger and anxiety grows…

It increasingly appears as though China’s allies are spiralling out of its control. Beijing, the senior partner in the triad, seeks to be the stable leader of a new world order, one that is not led by the US. But that’s difficult to do when one ally has started a war in Europe, and another is accused of aiding the invasion. “China is unhappy with the way things are going,” Mr Green says, “but they are trying to keep their discontent relatively quiet.” It’s certainly a sensitive topic for Beijing, judging by the response to our presence in the border town, where it seems tourists are welcome – but journalists are not. We were in public areas at all times, and yet the team was stopped, repeatedly questioned, followed and our footage deleted….

“Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea hasn’t really had any choice but to maintain good relations with China, which has been its sole benefactor,” Mr Green says.

But now, he adds, Russia “is offering an alternative and the North Koreans are seeking to exploit that”…

“For a very long time, China has had a policy of three nos in Northeast Asia – one of those nos was a no nuclear North Korea. Obviously that has been a failure,” Mr Green says.

Now Beijing fears that the alliance with Russia could destabilise North Korea, he adds: “That could even benefit Vladimir Putin in a way it really would not benefit Xi Jinping.”

Experts say Beijing is just as worried as the West about what military technology Putin might sell to Kim in exchange for troops.

“Satellites, for sure,” Mr [Aidan] Foster-Carter says. “But Putin is bad – not mad. Russia knows just as China knows that North Korea is a loose cannon. Giving [Kim] more technology for nukes is not a good thing for anybody.”

That seems overly optimistic to me. Putin is desperate – he must be to rely so heavily on North Korea for arms and soldiers – and Kim is in a strong position to demand the latest Russian nuclear technology. Why else send 10,000 of his elite troops to Ukraine? And what does Putin care, anyway? He may not be clinically insane, but with the Ukraine invasion and his increasingly demented pseudo-historical fantasy justifications for the slaughter he's unleashed, he's clearly deranged.

But Kim too might have a decision to make.

Although Russia is paying for shells and troops, Mr Foster-Carter says, it is China that "has actually kept North Korea going all this time, often through gritted teeth. I just wonder at what point Beijing will turn on Pyongyang?”.

Yes – as I said, snubbing China in favour of Putin's Russia could well be a move Kim will come to regret.