Taiwan and North Korea as Linked Flashpoints in US-China Relations

SHUXIAN LUO: When Beijing feels reassured about Taiwan, it constrains North Korea. And when Beijing feels decisively threatened by, you know, what it sees as US erosion or hollowing out of One China policy, then it moves to overtly shielding North Korea. 

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: Welcome to "Horns of a Dilemma,” the podcast of the Texas National Security Review. I'm Sheena Chestnut Greitens, TNSR's editor-in-chief, and I'm here today with our executive editor, Dr. Ryan Vest. We're pleased to have joining us today Shuxian Luo, author of the article "A Plum for a Peach: Taiwan, Issue Linkage, and China's Policy Toward North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program,” which is featured in Volume 9, Issue 4 of the Texas National Security Review.

Shuxian is an assistant professor in Asian studies at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Welcome to the show.

SHUXIAN LUO: Thank you, Sheena. It's great pleasure to be here. 

RYAN VEST: Shuxian, as Sheena brought up when she introduced the title of your article, you used the title "A Plum for a Peach,” and this is really about issue linkage. So in other words, it's suggesting that China's trying to strike a bargain with the US across two issues, Taiwan and North Korea, and link those together. As a jumping-off point, what is the trade at the heart of this article, and how does it change the way that we should understand China's policy toward North Korea's nuclear program and, even more importantly, toward Taiwan? 

SHUXIAN LUO: Thank you, Ryan. I think that's a great question to start off the conversation. 

So the core claim here is pretty simple. Basically it's—it argues that China's willingness to rein in North Korea's nuclear weapons program is tied to how secure Beijing feels about its interests on Taiwan.

So the two issues here, North Korea and Taiwan, often look like completely separate—they're completely separate, and they are traditionally treated in such a way. So what, on the one hand, we have this non-proliferation instability on the Korean Peninsula in Northeast Asia, and the other is most sensitive, political question in US-China relations.

So my argument here is that in Beijing's calculus, the two issues are connected, and China does treat them as tradable between each other. And the reason, or the foundation, in my article, is that such a linkage is even possible or viable is because China and the United States rank their priorities on the two issues in a differentiated but complementary way.

So take Taiwan first. For Beijing, Taiwan's status is paramount and non-negotiable red line. Even peace and stability in the Strait arguably comes second to it. But for Washington, the priority is flipped. So our abiding interest is to preserve peace and stability in the area, and we care less about Taiwan's ultimate status as long as the settlement is reached peacefully and without coercion.

And now take North Korea. So, China prioritizes stability on the peninsula over North Korea's nuclear weapons program. But Washington's priority—I think the United States' priorities are, again, flipped. So North Korea's advancing nuclear capabilities is worry—what worries us most, and stability is arguably the secondary concern.

So, this what—you know, this differentiation and complementarity is what makes a swap thinkable. So on each issue, the two sides' top priorities do not conflict with each other directly. So each of us can give some ground on the issue that we think is relatively less important or less pressing in exchange for the other side's cooperation on the thing that we think is more pressing or more important. So dynamics go—here goes like, I restrain my client on your behalf, and you restrain yours on my behalf. So this is what is captured in a saying of "A Plum for a Peach.” 

But let me unpack, you know, the core argument a little bit further before we dive into the nitty-gritties of the article. So that basically means when Beijing feels the US is holding the line on Taiwan, like reaffirming the One China policy, not emboldening Taiwan independence, China demonstrates a greater willingness to put pressure on North Korea, and sometimes at a real cost to its own relationship with Pyongyang. And—but when Beijing feels that assurance is eroding, then it does the opposite. So it condones and even overtly shields North Korea and use it as a counterweight to US pressure and the perceived encroachment on China's core interests on Taiwan.

So I think this observation in this article changes our way of understanding China's policy toward both North Korea and Taiwan in two ways. So on North Korea, it means China's famous, you know, or traditional inconsistency—sometimes tough, sometimes protective—it's not random or reckless, and it's not only about stability on peninsula alone. A key part of it is Taiwan. And on Taiwan, it means that North Korea is a leverage that Beijing can use when it feels its core interests on Taiwan is under challenge. So the two flashpoints that we usually talk about or analyze separately are linked in practice.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: So this is really interesting, and I wanted to talk for a moment about how you get at this question because I think that, you know, you're right that these issues have typically been treated very separately in American foreign policy and in the minds of American strategists and national security analysts.

But you argue that China really sees them as much more connected. So coming at this from the Chinese perspective requires you to look at a different set of sources and evidence base to write this article. 

So I wanted to ask you, you know, you draw on Chinese language sources, on official statements, on some think tank writing, and then on some interviews with US and I think South Korean officials. What do you think that the sources that you looked at shed light on that is missed in these more conventional ways of framing and thinking about these two Asian security challenges, Taiwan and North Korea?

SHUXIAN LUO: Thank you, Sheena. That's a great question, and I think that's a common question that, you know, people studying China and also, to a similar level, North Korea have been trying to, you know, juggle with throughout our research.

I think the single most important thing the sources reveal is that linkage logic is not just my inference from China's behavior. It is something that Chinese scholars, policy analysts, strategists, they themselves have articulated in the writing.

So I lean heavily on primary Chinese materials and then sort them by how authoritative it is. You know, for people who are familiar with the field of China studies, there's a whole hierarchy for Chinese language sources in terms of how authoritative they are. So at the top, you have a formal docu—national documents and leadership speeches, and then the second rung includes, you know, the quasi-authoritative sources like The People's Daily or—and some central government-affiliated think tanks. And then the third tier entails, you know, scholarly writings by, you know, folks at the—those elite universities like Fudan, Peking University, et cetera. 

And what I found is going back you know, for about three decades is Chinese experts, they themselves have been spelling out the connection. So take, for example, a scholar at Peking University in 2000 warned that China's willingness to mediate on North Korea would depend on the US stance toward Taiwan, and that is one of the earliest pieces that began to make such a linkage. And also, fast-forward to 2007, China's arms control association under the Chinese Foreign Ministry, in its 2007 annual report, talked about the idea that a nuclear-armed North Korea could serve a purpose by pinning down US forces that could be deployed in a Taiwan contingency. So that's the reasoning behind the behavior, and you know, we only get that by parsing through the primary sources.

And then I try, as we mentioned, that I triangulate these materials with non-Chinese sources such as US negotiators' memoirs, and also some interviews with former US and South Korean officials. And interesting information that corroborates with the information from the Chinese primary sources, you know, surfaced during this process.

So for example, a former senior South Korean diplomat who described a very, very senior Chinese official telling the South Koreans that Seoul need to stop talking about Taiwan when South Koreans pressed, you know, China to rein in Pyongyang. Because, as we know, that South Korea began to discuss the peace and stability issue in Taiwan Strait since 2021. So that kind of private exchanges corroborate, you know, the open Chinese sources, what those sources imply. And the triangulation shows—also allows me to avoid overreading or over-relying on any single type of sources, and also allows the Chinese language evidence and the interview evidence check each other.

I think, as to, you know, the issue about the conventional account is it tends to, again, like I mentioned, it tends to treat China's North Korea policy as either, you know, purely driven by the peninsula stability concerns or sometimes as a, you know, a derivative of the US-China relations. But my sources review is a Taiwan-anchored connection logic that the conventional framings seem to have largely missed. 

RYAN VEST: That's interesting, and, you know, coming at it from that view of using different sources, you make the argument that China does not necessarily view North Korea as simply either a strategic asset or a strategic liability. So how do they view North Korea? What is it instead?

SHUXIAN LUO: Right, Ryan. I think a lot of the existing debate is kind of stuck in that binary. So one camp says North Korea is a liability that Beijing tends to cut loose, and the other camp says it's a asset that China tends to protect and leverage.

But the problem is that China's actual behavior doesn't sit, you know, still in either extreme. But over the past three decades, China's behavior has vacillated between pressure in Pyongyang and covering for it.

So my answer is that North Korea isn't a fixed asset or a fixed liability, but rather its value to Beijing is shaped by how secure or insecure that Beijing feels about its interests regarding Taiwan. So when Beijing feels secure on Taiwan, North Korea represents mainly a source of regional instability, a troublemaking source and even, to some extent, a nuclear safety risk to China that Beijing's willing to help rein in. But when Beijing feels its Taiwan interest is being encroached, then that same North Korea suddenly become a useful strategic counterweight or distraction to pin down the US military assets that could be deployed to a Taiwan contingency.

So in a nutshell, I think North Korea's function or value to Beijing is dynamic, not static as, you know, implied in the conventional wisdom. And the same country, the same, you know, weapon carries different value really depend on, you know, what Washington is doing regarding Taiwan as Beijing see it.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: So then, you know, as North Korea's strategic value fluctuates in Beijing's eyes, you identify a range of Chinese behaviors toward North Korea—you know, containing, condoning, shielding. Talk us through, a little bit, that spectrum and explain how these look different in practice.

SHUXIAN LUO: Sure. The three forms they mentioned—constraining, condoning, shielding—they spread out across a whole spectrum. 

So let me start with constraining or containing. It is the active, pressure end. So that basically involves China's behavior, like public—like openly criticizing Pyongyang's, you know, nuclear missile activities, supporting and enforcing UN sanctions, cutting off, you know, trade, financial transactions, oil, tourism, et cetera, as well as backing multilateral diplomacy like Six-Party Talk among others.

And then next we have condoning. So that sits in the middle, short of shielding. It is neither active pressure North Korea nor substantively protecting North Korea. It is diplomatic cover, diplomatic or political cover. So Beijing basically stays silent on North Korean provocation while, you know, blaming the United States for neglecting North Korea's, quote-unquote, "legitimate security concerns." And Beijing—and in this category, Beijing also expands high-level official exchanges with North Korea to signal warmth and solidarity. It is what China does when it stops active cooperation with the international community to rein in North Korea, but still not yet actively obstructing or sabotage international non-proliferation effort.

And thirdly, the shielding is, you know, the hard end. It is the active, substantive protection to mitigate the real cost on North Korea's non-compliance and even breakout by, you know, like, blocking or vetoing UN Security Council sanctions and obstructing international condemnation.

So all these three forms correspond to Beijing's threat perception regarding its interest on Taiwan. So to be specific, when Beijing feels reassured about Taiwan, it constrains North Korea. But when it feels somewhat challenged on Taiwan, but not yet decisively so, then it drifts toward tacit condoning. And when Beijing feels decisively threatened by, you know, what it sees as US erosion or hollowing out of One China policy, then it moves to overtly shielding North Korea. 

RYAN VEST: So, I'd like to go a little further down that rabbit hole, because a real key concept in this article is this idea of American assurance regarding Taiwan. For our listeners, what kinds of US statements or actions does Beijing interpret as reassurance?

And by the same token, can you lay out the other end of the spectrum? What kinds of actions do the opposite and erode the One China framework that we all know is so important to Beijing?

SHUXIAN LUO: Sure. In this article I define assurance as US statements and actions that collectively do three things together: first, opposing unilateral change to the status quo by either Beijing or Taipei. Second, reaffirming the US ties with Taiwan remain as strictly unofficial. And third, supporting a peaceful, mutually acceptable resolution to the Taiwan issue, signaling that the United States is not seeking Taiwan's permanent separation from mainland. So it is combination of the three that matters, although the specific wording or emphasis, you know, on different specific occasions might shift.

And I think the most—the clearest signal of assurance are high-level and declaratory messages. So, like, for example, a US president reaffirming One China policy and no US support for Taiwan independence. And we have seen this, you know, in the past, historically, like in back in 2003, President George W. Bush openly rebuked Chen Shui-bian for—Taiwan's leader at the time—for attempting to unilaterally change the status quo.

And fast-forward to 2017, President Donald Trump, during his first term, reaffirmed the standard One China policy language after his initial phone call with Tsai Ing-wen, the Taiwan leaders at the time, that rattled—really unnerved Beijing at the time. And more recently, you know, President Trump's statement that the US is not looking to have someone, meaning Taiwan, go independent is also, you know, another kind of message—"reassure” message. And also other US behaviors like, you know, restraint on arms sale to Taiwan and keeping Taiwan leaders' transits in the United States low-key and political-fanfare-free are also reassuring to Beijing as well.

And on the erosion side I think it's the mirror image. And a typical trigger here is high-profile Taiwan leaders visits—transit to the United States—say, for example, Taiwan's leader Lee Teng-hui's 1995 Cornell visit that triggered the third Taiwan Strait crisis and left lasting damage to Chinese confidence in Washington's commitment to maintaining only unofficial relations with Taiwan. And other high-profile visits by, you know, senior US officials to Taiwan, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to the island in 2022, have similar erosion effect. 

And other US actions like, you know, big arm sales, presidential statements that sounds like suggesting we have a defense commitment to Taiwan or framing Taiwan as a geostrategic node in the US strategy, as some senior US official—former US official has suggested that Taiwan must be denied to China. All these kind of statements and actions aggravate the insecurity that China feels about its Taiwan interests.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: So this is really interesting. 

Just for the, you know, again, for the listeners who might not have looked at the article, the article traces four phases in this issue—shifting issue linkage relationship from the 1990s all the way through 2024. 

And so I'm wondering if at a, like, a very high level, like a sentence or two per period, you could tell us basically what did that issue linkage look like in each period, and what was being traded or not in Beijing's mind for what behavior toward North Korea was sort of based on what behavior on the US side toward Taiwan, or over Taiwan?

SHUXIAN LUO: So, there are four phases I traced throughout this article.

So basically, phase one covers the period from 1993 to 1996. That is the control case where the dog didn't bark. So China basically played a quiet constructive role in the first North Korean nuclear crisis, but did not tie that cooperation to Taiwan. A major reason is because of the misalignment of the timing between the two incidents. So the nuclear crisis ended in 1994, a year before the Taiwan Strait crisis was set in motion in '95, right? So when China cooperated on North Korea, its confidence in the US assurance arguably hadn't been so seriously damaged yet, and therefore, the imperative to link the two issues hadn't formed yet.

And then phase two start—that covers the period from 2002 to 2008. It represents a case of what I call explicit affirmative linkage. So that is a linkage strategy in the most visible form. During this period, the second North Korean nuclear crisis basically coincided with Beijing's deepening anxiety about Chen Shui-bian's independence moves on Taiwan. So China considerably stepped up its pressure on North Korea, play leading role in Six-Party Talks and sought to trade those cooperation efforts for US restraint on Chen Shui-bian. And senior Chinese officials said so, almost loudly in telling their American interlocutors that, "we want you to care about Taiwan as much as we care about Korea." And scholars close to, you know, the Chinese officialdom call this Chinese approach as co-management by the—by China and the United States on both Taiwan and North Korea issue.

And phase three covers the period from 2009 to the end of 2017. That represents implicit affirmative linkage. And this phase is basically, you know, the Ma Ying-jeou presidency on Taiwan when the cross-strait relations were pretty calm and cordial. So Beijing felt a high level of assurance and security regarding its interests on Taiwan. So China didn't need to extract explicit pledges from the United States. Instead, it can settle for a more implicit, non—just non-obstructive US posture and keep cooperating on North Korea, and it did, actually. So China backed pretty tough sanctions against North Korea in 2016, 2017, and the linkage is, at that time, was still operating, but it's just, you know, quieter, because Beijing was in a quite comfortable spot in this—during this period.

And the last phase, phase four, covers the period from 2018 to 2024. That is when China switched to what I call retaliatory linkage. That is flip of the affirmative linkage. So starting from 2018, as we might recall from, you know, not too long ago, the United States designates China as a strategic competitor, and, you know, the support for Taiwan ramps up, including, like, you know, legislations like Taiwan Travel Act, publicized—you know, publicized US naval transits in the Taiwan Strait, and big arms sales, senior US officials' visits, among others. So Beijing feels, you know, the US assurance being kind of hollowed out and, as a result, it shifts from constraining North Korea to condoning it and to shielding it. That culminated in China's first-ever veto on UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea in 2022. But, there—but after that, there is a partial moderation in 2023 and 2024, as Biden administration took some damage control measures that restored a certain level of reassurance on Taiwan. And we see that China, again, distancing itself from Pyongyang and abstained rather than vetoed a 2024 UN sanction monitoring voting, with Russia casting the only veto.

So across the four phases, you get a full spectrum—the linkage absent, then explicit affirmative linkage, then implicit affirmative linkage, and then turn to that retaliatory, tit-for-tat linkage. All these, you know, tracking the assurance level that Beijing perceives in US-Taiwan policy.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: So let me ask a follow-up.

I found this really interesting, right? Because I'm used to thinking about linkage as sort of a, I guess, a static concept or a constant, rather than something that fluctuates in the way that you're describing here. So I thought that that was a really interesting and important piece of the article conceptually that you draw out.

But I wanted to draw that up to present and ask you about an observation that actually is at the start of the article, and I think is really striking, but is something that I've heard a lot of discussion about both in the US-China relationship and with respect to North Korea policy, and that's that both Beijing and Washington seem to have kind of backed off the language of North Korean denuclearization. Right?

So earlier we heard, you know, CVID, complete verifiable, irreversible denuclearization as the goal of the Six-Party Talks all the way through subsequent efforts around North Korean denuclearization. And so I wanted to ask you, you know, does this help us understand why we're seeing a backing off of the language of denuclearization or why denuclearization has become a—such a difficult, almost, you know, potentially impossible goal at this point? And why is that significant for the future of security in East Asia, if so?

SHUXIAN LUO: Of course, I think these are all important questions, and you're right that, you know, the, you know, the omission of the traditional denuclearization language on both sides of the Pacific, and this—and you're right in noting that my article opens with this, you know, the series of US and Chinese, you know, important national documents, in terms of, you know, leaving out the traditional language of "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” civil language.

Let me start maybe with, you know, with each side of the United States and China. I think, you know, the Chinese readout of the phrase has—that phrase, the "denuclearization of Korean Peninsula” had traditionally been a fixture of Beijing's Korean policy for the entire post-Cold War era. And that omission was, as you noted again correctly, well, it was not a one-off thing. It repeats across, you know, subsequent Chinese documents such as China's white paper on arms control and non-proliferation issued in November 2025, and then, subsequently, the Chinese official readout of Xi Jinping summit with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in January this year.

And looking to the other side with the United States, we also see a parallel shift. So the most recent US strategy documents quietly drop the civic language that we use to press, you know, on North Korea and other stakeholders in the region. And in practice we look like, you know, we're pivoting from rollback towards threat management and deterrence, and we—and also towards shifting more of the burden to South Korea.

I think these, all these shifts on both sides of the Pacific matter because the two great powers who are supposed to push for the goal of denuclearization now both quietly walk away from that goal so that North Korea is able to consolidate its status as a de facto nuclear state. And those, you know, all these are happening against, you know, against the backdrop of a series of dangerous developments in this region over the past several years. Like, for example, North Korea's 2022 law authorizing preemptive nuclear use on both nuclear and non-nuclear adversaries, and its 2024 designation of South Korea as its principal enemy, as well as, you know, North Korea's deepening alignment with Russia since 2023.

So all these developments have made, you know, the whole security landscape in the region even more brittle, I would say.

So the significance is that it changes the question we tend to ask. So the old question we used to ask is, "how can we get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program?" But now I think the more realistic question is, what leverage do we still actually have, and what does workable cooperation arrangements with China may look like when denuclearization is maybe at best a long-term aspiration? So that's the gap, I think, you know, still left in the existing debate or the existing literature, and I tried to close in this article. 

RYAN VEST: Shuxian, I'd like to turn a little bit to policy implications now.

SHUXIAN LUO: Sure.

RYAN VEST: In this article, you propose a middle path centered on affirmative linkage rather than a grand bargain or simple deterrence. What would that approach look like for the US, China, Taiwan, and on the Korean Peninsula?

SHUXIAN LUO: So, let me in first place put—situate the middle path approach between the two alternatives that I reject.

So on the one end is the great bargain approach, as we might know, that, you know, that basic argues that the United States should make major concessions on Taiwan, perhaps ruling out a military intervention, in exchange for China's help on North Korea and other important issues in the region and around world. But I think that's a non-starter for two reasons.

First, I think there's essentially no political appetite for it right now in Washington, as even some of its advocates admit that. And secondly, and more importantly, I think, it rests on a flawed premise that the great powers—China and the United States—can just, you know, trade their small clients like pawns, but they actually can't. Both North Korea and Taiwan have agency, they're not just pawns to be traded away.

On the other extreme, on the other end, sits the strict issue-by-issue negotiation approach. That's where you refuse to link anything in negotiation. And the problem here is the opposite, because a single-issue negotiation approach may not generate sufficient mutual gains for the two sides, for two great powers, to agree on any workable arrangement.

The middle path approach is a more focused, reciprocal effort into jointly managing and reducing military risk on both the Korean Peninsula and in Taiwan Strait that is deliberately leverage what we observe from, you know, the historical record, which is, China tends to restrain North Korea when it feels secure on Taiwan. So I think for the United States, key and most striking part is that it requires consistency, not making new concessions, like by reinforcing the One China declaratory position, pacing arms sale to the actual level of PRC threat rather than to politics, which is essentially a restoration or return to President Ronald Reagan's framework back in 1982.

And also, the United States needs to sharpen the line between executive policy and congressional symbolic posturing, I think. And we can also use the mutual notification mechanism that we already built with China in 2014 to give Beijing kind of a heads-up, like, notification, not consultation, on arms sale and exchange for reciprocal transparency or heads-up on things like Chinese military and paramilitary activities around Taiwan so that we can produce—in doing so, we can produce a certain level of predictability and perhaps generate a modus vivendi out there.

And I think for China, the ask is to substantiate a peaceful approach to Taiwan with concrete actions that demonstrate its strategic patience and restraint, like scaling back its air and naval activities to pre-2022 levels, halting the big exercises around the islands, easing the diplomatic and economic coercive pressuring campaign on Taiwan, et cetera.

And turning to the Korean Peninsula, I think the United States and China can work to revive a freeze to free the first place, a North Korean nuclear testing and missile launch freeze in exchange for reductions or maybe suspension in US-South Korean military exercises, which is quite—which can be quite quickly reversed and can be compensated for with, you know, computer-based simulations as we did actually between 2018 And 2021.

And I think Beijing needs to actually pressure Pyongyang to do several things, like to revise its 2022 preemptive use law, to tighten China's export control enforcement, even to, at some point, maybe, to push Russia to do the same thing. And with those improvements, I think the United States can reward North Korea with, you know, gradual, partial sanction lifting.

So Washington and Beijing can also start thinking about talking about re-reopening, multilateral talks, starting perhaps as a four-party mechanism that comprised of the US, China, and two Koreas, and with room to bring in Japan and Russia maybe at some time later. And crucially, I think Washington needs to clarify its goal is to protect its, you know, the US homeland and its allies from nuclear coercion and attacks. It is not seeking a regime change in North Korea.

And even for South Korea and Taiwan, I think the payoff is real, although it's indirect. So for South Korea, a stabilized, you know, Taiwan Strait would mitigate Seoul's fear that the US forces on peninsula will be diverted to a Taiwan scenario, or even South Korea itself might be—may be drawn into a US-China military conflict over Taiwan. And for Taiwan, of course, they will benefit from the reduced coercion and pressure as well.

But I also want to emphasize one thing, one discipline that makes the middle path work—approach work. We need to keep it narrow with a specific laser-like focus on just the two issues and the two issues only, and avoid bundling in other contentious issues like trade, technology, critical minerals, you name it, right? Because this arrangement, even when just confined to Taiwan and North Korea and handled well, is still inherently brittle because, as I mentioned, the two small client states still have agency of their own, and things can easily go awry. So it demands, you know, expectation management, a long horizon, you know, patience and resilience from both Beijing and Washington.

So if we bundle in other, you know, more contentious issues, the danger of collapsing compounds here because a breakdown on any one of those bundled issues can easily spill into the Taiwan and North Korea tracks and cripple the whole arrangement.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: So this is really, really interesting. 

Can I ask a little bit of a follow-up question? 'Cause it strikes me that one of the things that people might react to in this is that North Korea's already a nuclear power, so in some senses it's a stronger client on the Chinese side of the ledger, to use the kind of traditional IR theory terms, than maybe Taiwan is, right? Where Taiwan's sort of independent deterrent capabilities vis-à-vis China are not as strong as North Korea's are vis-à-vis the United States.

So is there a risk that the United States would end up somehow trading Taiwan's security, which can't be accomplished independently, and not get enough on North Korean denuclearization to make the trade-off sort of worthwhile?

SHUXIAN LUO: I think that's a great question. But if—but I think one way to think about the flipside is a counterfactual world or alternative possibility is, what if, you know, China remained a determined spoiler rather than a constrained cooperator in terms of, you know, in terms of help reining North Korea? Then we might have seen a much deeper and much darker picture on the Korean Peninsula and much, much faster trajectory in North Korea acquiring its nuclear capabilities.

So I think we are facing a choice in-between, you know, having China cooperating as a constrained cooperator on one hand—although we know there's a ceiling as to how far and how much pressure China's willing to put on North Korea, on one hand—but on the other hand, you know, with China, the alternative counterfactual is, China perhaps even, you know, coalescing with North Korea and even Russia. Then that would be a bigger trouble, I would say, for the US and even Taiwan, and US allies in the region.

So I think the risk that you just identified is real. But if we think counterfactually, I think the risk is even bigger out there. 

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: Yeah, it's interesting. We don't live in a world of perfect choices, so it's interesting to think about what's the realm of the possible here, and therefore, how do we assess these trade-offs. Thanks for entertaining my follow-up.

SHUXIAN LUO: Well, actually, I tackle it in my article, because I keep receiving all these questions. It's pretty, you know, expectful, that, you know, people raise this question. It's—I think it's a great follow-up to help clarify some, you know, some potential criticism or doubts people might raise about an article.

RYAN VEST: So I'd like to wrap this up with just, kind of, one more of these kind of deep thoughts. If you were advising these governments, and I'm—we're talking about four different governments here, Washington, Beijing, Taipei, and Seoul. If you were an advisor or writing a policy memorandum for them, what one piece of advice would you give these policymakers to make this work? And, you know, you can look at this from the opposite side as well. What mistake would you most want to see policymakers avoid?

SHUXIAN LUO: Sure. I could just use one, you know, sentence from my article to provide this piece of advice, is that China's willingness to constrain North Korea is inextricably linked to the level of assurance it perceives from United States on Taiwan. And I think the mistake I most want you, you know, folks out there to avoid is actually, I think, the two sides of the same coin.

So one side is treating, you know, Taiwan and, and North Korea as completely separate issues because then you'll keep being surprised when, you know, when pressure on one issue shows up as problem on the other. So I think Washington should not hollow out assurance on Taiwan and then wonder why Beijing stopped helping on North Korea.

I think that there's the other side of the coin, a mirror image mistake I'd like to caution against as well: that is to conclude that if the two issues are linked, we can simply buy Chinese cooperation on North Korea with big Taiwan concession. That misreads the mechanism I'm proposing here in this article too, because the linkage is real, but it is two-way, and it's bounded. It rewards, you know, steady, credible assurance as a repeated game, so it's not a, you know, one-off deal.

So in a nutshell, don't silo two issues, and also don't fantasize about trading one away for the other. Keep the linkage focused, reciprocal, proportionate, but—and the same time, be honest about its limits. I think that's the advice I like would—I'd like to have.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: That was a much pithier way of getting at the answer, the question that I asked earlier about could you, sort of, you know, try to buy North Korean denuclearization and give up something on Taiwan and then not have it work to actually buy North Korean denuclearization. So thanks for clarifying that, even though my question on it trying to get at that point was somewhat muddled. That was great.

Shuxian, we want to thank you very much for joining us today. This has been a really interesting discussion of two of the most pressing national security challenges the United States faces in Asia or really around the world.

So thank you for joining us.

SHUXIAN LUO: Thank you for having me. It's a great pleasure talking to both you and Ryan.

SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS: Thanks for joining us on "Horns of a Dilemma” from the Texas National Security Review. Our guest today has been Dr. Shuxian Luo, author of the article "A Plum for a Peach? Issue Linkage, Taiwan, and China's Policy Toward North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program,” which as always can be accessed for free on our website.

If you enjoyed this review, please be sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen, and you can always find more of our work at TNSR.org. Today's episode was produced by TNSR digital and technical manager Jordan Morning, and made possible by The University of Texas System. This is Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Ryan Vest.

Thanks again for listening.