China Preps for Crisis on Korean Peninsula

At the top of the list of Chinese concerns is the possibility of a pre-emptive U. S. military strike on the North Korean dictatorship.

With President Donald Trump threatening military action to stop further development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions, China has to consider a wide range of potential crises.

A U.S. nuclear strike poses the possibility of nuclear contamination crossing the border into China. Military action also could trigger an economic collapse in North Korea, which would unleash a flood of refugees into China.

If American and South Korean military forces would invade North Korea, China would have to worry how far north and how close to its borders those forces might come.

As President Trump stepped up the rhetoric, pressuring China to do more to ‘solve’ the North Korean problem, and threatening military action to halt Kim’s nuclear weapons program ambitions, it is clear that China has used this crisis to not just prepare for potential problems with North Korea but to reinforce military forces elsewhere.”

The Wall Street Journal has reported a review of official and military websites provides a number of recent changes China has already implemented along its border.

Recent measures include establishing a new border defense brigade, 24-hour video surveillance of the mountainous frontier backed by aerial drones, and bunkers to protect against nuclear and chemical blasts, according to the websites.”

In addition, the Chinese have merged and modernized military units, moving them into border regions and conducting military preparedness drills with special forces and airborne units.

They include a live-fire drill in June by helicopter gunships and one in July by an armored infantry unit recently transferred from eastern China and equipped with new weaponry.”

Another option on the table for China is seizing control of North Korean nuclear sites to prevent them from falling into the hands of South Korean and American forces should an invasion occur.

Last May retired Maj. Gen. Wang Haiyun, former military attaché to Moscow now attached to several Chinese think tanks, expressed his views in an article aimed at warning Washington and South Korea:

China should demand that any U.S. military attack result in no nuclear contamination, no U.S. occupation of areas north of the current “demarcation line” between North and South, and no regime hostile to China established in the North.”

President Trump continues to pursue diplomatic channels to enlist Chinese aid in getting North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un under control, but should that initiative fail because of Chinese intransigence, a military response may be in order to prevent a North Korean nuclear strike on South Korea, Japan, the United States or even China.

American and Chinese forces last faced off in 1953, when an armistice finally was put in place to end the Korean War. That bloody struggle should remind both sides of what’s at stake now, and how repeating history is not in anyone’s best interests.

Source: ZeroHedge