Your Move, China

Jason Lee / Reuters

Watch out: A North Korean soldier minds the China border

If North Korea has in the past made a habit of annoying China, its only ostensible ally in the world, what must Beijing be thinking now? For most of the past six years, China has been the host and chief promoter of the so-called six-party talks. Their explicit goal: to get North Korea to give up its nuclear-weapons program. When the North launched another long-range ballistic missile in early April, China helped promote the fig leaf at the U.N. Security Council that the rocket carried a communications satellite and thus might not be a direct violation of two U.N....

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