China's North Korean Tightrope Walk
China is walking through this gingerly, like a man whose pockets are loaded up with fragile eggs. The Foreign Ministry spokesman says China is "resolutely opposed" to the North's nuclear weapons program.
And China has been leading the effort at negotiations primarily through the six party talks: China, Russia, U.S., Japan and South and North Korea.
But North Korea has now walked away from the talks and China is having a hard time finding an answer to this latest saber rattling.
Beijing is trapped by its own insistence — usually directed at the United States — that one country has no right to interfere in the affairs of another. That keeps China from open criticism of the North that might look like interference.
North Korean soldiers march along the border fence on the North Korean side bordering China near Dandong, northeastern China's Liaoning province, May 26, 2009.
And geography is also politics — China and North Korea share a border where goods pass back and forth, mostly Chinese goods into North Korea.
But if there is upheaval in North Korea, the flow will come the other way: tens of thousands of hungry, desperate refugees from the North seeking sanctuary in China.
China's patience is not limitless. Rising tension is bad for business in Asia. And these days, as one of the few economies still growing amid worldwide recession, China is all about business.
For Beijing, as for the rest of the world, the best outcome is that the North's actions are all about Kim Jong Il in some way solidifying his power.
There are some who believe the ailing leader – he reportedly had a stroke last year – wants to install his son as his successor. That would keep North Korea a family-run business. Kim inherited the job when his father died.
If this is some kind of internal North Korean power struggle that means it could be resolved within the regime, and all the bluster about attacking South Korea would fade into memory with all the other defiant statements from years past.
But this is North Korea, where logic does not always apply. That's what makes the country so constantly dangerous — now, as much as ever.