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Chinese foreign policymaking is an opaque, often glacial process. Senior leaders rarely give interviews, and the twice-weekly press conferences held by the foreign ministry seldom produce any insight into Beijing's thinking. Last week's briefings were no exception, with a ministry representative doggedly fending off questions about the erratic behavior of China's ally, North Korea. A formal ministry statement blandly stated that China was "seriously concerned" by Pyongyang's July 5 test-firing of seven ballistic missiles, launches that drew international condemnation as a dangerous provocation. Even by Chinese standards, it was a mild response, particularly so because Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao had made a pointed and very public request that North Korea refrain from conducting the tests.

But beneath the surface calm, diplomats and analysts said the Chinese leaders were frustrated, even angry, that Pyongyang defied their wishes. "I think the Chinese are as baffled as we are" by North Korea's actions, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said in Beijing last week. Hill was in the Chinese capital to talk with senior officials about how to handle the fallout from the missile launches, which broke North Korea's self-imposed moratorium on such tests. "China has done so much for that country," Hill said, "and that country just seems intent on taking all of China's generosity and giving nothing back." Says Yan Xuetong, a professor of international relations at Beijing's Tsinghua University: "I think that China is very unhappy with North Korea, which put it in a very awkward position. China now feels it is trapped in a game it can't win."

It's a game of high stakes. The security and stability of the region has been under threat for more than a decade because of the North's nuclear-weapons program. Efforts to convince North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to abandon his nuclear aspirations, either with offers of economic aid or threats of economic sanctions, have been unsuccessful—and officials in Washington and Tokyo have often expressed frustration that China hasn't used its considerable leverage to force concessions from Pyongyang. North Korea depends heavily upon China, its largest trading partner and strongest ally, to keep its sick economy on life support. China supplies about half of the $1.8 billion in aid the regime receives annually, including virtually all of its oil.

Despite calls by Washington for China to take a larger, more positive role in international diplomacy to match the country's economic stature, Beijing has typically been leery of using punitive measures to prod Kim into line. But this time Pyongyang may have gone too far. On Saturday, the United Nations Security Council, which includes China as a permanent member, unanimously passed a Tokyo-sponsored resolution condemning North Korea's tests and demanding that it immediately suspend its missile program. The resolution also imposed sanctions by barring U.N. member states from trading technology and material with North Korea that could be used in missiles or weapons of mass destruction—a key measure sought by the U.S. and Japan. American and Japanese diplomats secured Beijing's vote by toning down their preferred resolution, which would have invoked Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter authorizing the Security Council to respond to "threats to the peace" and "acts of aggression" with anything from economic sanctions to military force. Instead, China permitted the resolution to mention rather less ominously the Council's "special responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security."

The toned-down wording may be a sign of Beijing's ambivalence about how tough to get with Kim, but few doubt its sincerity in wanting to defuse this crisis. Last week, for example, China tried to negotiate with Pyongyang independently, dispatching a Deputy Premier and assistant foreign minister to Pyongyang. "China's really trying," said Hill, who is U.S. President George W. Bush's point man on the North Korea nuclear issue. "We're trying. Everyone is trying except, unfortunately, the D.P.R.K." (North Korea officially calls itself the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.)

China and North Korea fought against the U.S. and South Korea during the Korean War and were once famously said to be "as close as lips and teeth." But their longtime alliance has become increasingly strained as China modernized its economy and prospered while the North remained isolated and stagnant. "China and the D.P.R.K. have enormous mutual distrust in spite of the fact that they have an alliance on paper," says Michael Green, who was senior director for Asian affairs for the Bush White House's National Security Council and met with Chinese officials to talk about nuclear proliferation issues in 2004 and 2005. One of Beijing's concerns is that Kim's nuclear belligerence will encourage China's ancient rival Japan to increase the role of its military or seek nuclear weapons of its own. "The Chinese leadership considers North Korea an albatross," says Green, now at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But Beijing is reluctant to take a harder line, partly because it can neither control Kim nor predict how he will react. Pyongyang in the past has made veiled threats that it would attack South Korea if sanctions were imposed. Following the passage of the U.N. resolution on Saturday, North Korea said through its U.N. representative that it "totally rejects" the measure.

Chinese leaders worry that draconian sanctions such as cutting off food and fuel shipments could trigger the regime's collapse, bringing refugees, disease and economic and social disruption to China's northeast. Such fears are well founded, says Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. In 1994, China's reduction of rice supplies to the North—part of a previous effort to force Pyongyang to negotiate over its nuclear-weapons program—contributed to a devastating famine. "The famine was the fault of North Korean mismanagement, of course, but it's clear that Chinese actions were the straw that broke the camel's back," Eberstadt says. If China halted aid today, "Who can say whether there might not be a civil war" in the North, says Kenneth Lieberthal, an international-relations professor at the University of Michigan and a former Clinton Administration lead negotiator with North Korea. "If that happens, who will have control of the nukes? That is not a situation that China wants to be confronted with at all."

Beijing will almost certainly stick to its long-standing policy of economic engagement with North Korea, in the hope that it can wean Kim from nukes and bring him closer to the international community. China, along with South Korea and the U.S., have been urging Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks, the multilateral forum created to negotiate an end to North Korea's nuclear program. Pyongyang's delegates walked out of the last round of talks in November, vowing not to return unless the U.S. lifts a freeze on North Korean assets at a Macau bank. That freeze was imposed to crack down on North Korea's trafficking in drugs and counterfeit U.S. dollars.

In the long run, the failure to find a meaningful deterrent for North Korean provocations may mean Kim will become bolder in his stunts, which are geared to extort maximum aid from the countries threatened by his saber rattling. Jing Huang, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington says he thinks China's patience may be wearing thin. "This missile crisis will be the beginning of the end," Huang predicts. "It is forcing Beijing to see [that] the consequences of North Korea's actions are all bad for China." Says Green: "I think China is going to exert far more pressure on North Korea than they have in the past, but will still be very concerned about sanctions or other tools the U.S. can use to destabilize North Korea. The Chinese are desperately trying to find that sweet spot in the middle." People have been scouring the Korean peninsula for that spot for years; nobody's found it yet.

• Simon Elegant | Beijing
• Kim Jong Il's regime is testing the patience of China, its chief benefactor and ally