MSNBC.com

'Print this'sponsored by

Feb. 8, 2007 - Once again Beijing is swarming with diplomatic motorcades, convoys of sleek black sedans fluttering flags and getting special treatment from traffic police. The occasion:  a new round of the Six-Party Talks aimed at defusing the North Korean nuclear crisis. Never before in the history of discussions, which began three years ago, have they triggered such palpable optimism.

These great expectations are based on promising developments—such as a bilateral U.S.-North Korea meeting in Berlin recently to discuss Washington’s crackdown on Pyongyang’s financial transactions—that followed North Korea’s first nuclear test late last year. Are the negotiators on the verge of a breakthrough? Certainly there’s much riding on the outcome of the meetings here. When the six nations’ special envoys venture out of their limousines, a crush of foreign reporters films their every movement and hangs on their every word. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill predicted “hard bargaining” in coming days, and some see the talks as so critical that Pyongyang might threaten to conduct a second nuke test should they break down.  One way or another, this is a pivotal moment. Japanese envoy Kenichiro Sasae says the current round could be a “watershed.”

While the negotiators in Beijing prepared to discuss the future of Northeast Asia, half a world away yet more shiny black cars with fluttering flags were carrying Chinese President Hu Jintao and his entourage on the last leg of an historic eight-nation African tour. This, too, is seen as a turning point in Chinese diplomacy. Critics contend that Beijing’s booming appetite for energy and other natural resources has propped up cruel dictators and plundered less-developed nations of oil and other commodities.

On his trip, Hu denied China was becoming a neocolonialist power, evoking the fact that "Chinese people were subjected to colonial aggression and oppression by foreign powers" in the past. And during a visit to Sudan—China’s fourth largest global supplier of oil—Hu went further than he’s ever gone to try to tell his Sudanese counterpart, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, to do the right thing. Hu stressed that the four-year conflict in Darfur should now be resolved through greater United Nations involvement, through support for the U.N.’s “constructive role in realizing peace in Darfur.”

The surprising thing is not that people see China as a rising international power—or even that it’s starting to act like one. In recent years Beijing has come out of its shell, displaying its “soft power” and dispatching legions of smiling diplomats (not to mention business delegations) to virtually every corner of the globe. But now the moment of truth is approaching: a big power has big responsibilities, and it can’t always be warm and cuddly when it tries to carry them out.

Does China have what it takes to be tough? Beijing has found itself entwined in close trade and political relationships with a hit parade of unsavory leaders. Hu’s recent odyssey to Africa—where 2006 trade with China mushroomed 30 percent for the fifth consecutive year—highlighted his country’s ties to Sudan’s Bashir (for whom the Chinese will build a new $17 million presidential palace) and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. Closer to home, Beijing is the single most important foreign partner for the ruthless Burmese junta and the erratic North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il. To these developing-world clients and partners, Beijing continues to offer public reassurances that the message that Chinese assistance comes with no political strings attached and that China will never interfere in other’s domestic affairs.

The big question is when Beijing will realize that its international diplomacy can’t be all smiles. Even as he was canceling Sudan’s debt and unveiling new projects before Bashir, Hu also pressured him on Darfur. Specifically, Hu asked Bashir to work harder to get rebels who refused to sign the peace pact to come onboard.  Hu stressed to Bashir that “You have to resolve this problem,” according to a Sudanese official quoted by foreign media. Still, Hu did not threaten to use China's economic clout to push Bashir into accepting a strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur. Moreover, Beijing has previously blocked previous Security Council moves to impose sanctions against Khartoum. Last week State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Beijing has given "some mixed signals" to Sudan.

China doesn’t like to publicly criticize regimes such as Sudan and Iran, upon whom it depends for energy supplies. But it’s been putting the hard word on its recalcitrant neighbor North Korea for months. Hu was said to have been “infuriated” when Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test on the same day that Hu convened a key Chinese Communist Party conclave in Beijing.

Beijing’s leaders are worried by the prospect that North Korea’s alarming nuclear ambitions—“flagrant” was the word Chinese media used—might trigger any number of catastrophic events detrimental to Chinese interests. Destabilizing waves of refugees across the China-North Korea border are just one potential headache. And if Washington decided that a pre-emptive strike on North Korean’s nuclear facilities was the only way to resolve the crisis, China could find itself embroiled in conflict on the Korean Peninsula, with American soldiers right on its frontier.

So the best example of Chinese hardball diplomacy is Beijing’s dealings with Pyongyang. “China and some other countries have progressively lost patience with North Korea,” U.S. envoy Hill told NPR just before landing in Beijing this week for the current round of Six-Party Talks. After Pyongyang’s nuke test “China signaled pretty strongly to the North Koreans that they’re going to need to shape up,” he said.

Still, Beijing hasn’t and won’t sign on easily to the idea of international economic sanctions against North Korea or Sudan. Such embargoes have been an especially neuralgic issue in the history of Chinese diplomacy—partly because of how Beijing has bristled at being the target of sanctions itself after incidents such as the 1989 bloodshed at Tiananmen Square. Nor should observers expect dramatic public displays of displeasure. Beijing prefers to twist arms behind closed doors. When Pyongyang initially refused to sign on to the idea of the Six-Party Talks, Chinese oil supplies to North Korea abruptly ceased for several days. That helped bring Pyongyang to the table. Now all eyes are on Beijing, to see whether the talks’ host can cajole, sweet-talk or strong-arm its guests into reading off the same page on North Korea’s nukes—at least on how the first stage of disarmament could play out. Sudan may be a tougher nut to crack.