Authored by Zainab Calcuttawala via OilPrice.com,
Chinese diplomatic analysts believe further nuclear tests by North Korea could push Beijing over the edge, prompting an oil embargo that would deal a devastating blow to Pyongyang’s stability.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Fox News that he had been informed that “China would be taking sanctions actions on their own,” should Pyongyang conduct another nuclear test.
With the North Korean situation tense after Friday's latest failed missile attempt, the South Korea's Korea Times reports that a Chinese town near the border with North Korea is "urgently" recruiting Korean-Chinese interpreters, "stirring speculation that China is bracing for an emergency situation involving its nuclear-armed neighbor."
North Korea's regime defied an increasingly broader chorus of voices, including the US, Japan, China, South Korea and Russia, saying on Monday that it will continue its nuclear weapons tests, and warned it would "speed up to the maximum” its measures for bolstering its nuclear deterrence in response to the U.S. increasing "aggression and hysteria" against the country, a North Korea Foreign Ministry spokesman says in statement distributed by the official Korean Central News Agency.
With much of Europe and Asia, including the U.K., France, Germany and China markets closed for Labor Day, Asian stocks and the dollar rose buoyed by news that Congress had reached a deal to keep the US government funded through the end of September. S&P futures are up 4 points or 0.2%. Oil declined as rigs targeting crude in the U.S. rose for a fifteenth week and output from Libya rebounded.
One day after his "100 Day" rally in Harrisburg, president Trump "Faced the nation" on CBS, and suggested that China may have hacked the emails of prominent Democrats to meddle with the 2016 presidential election, countering the view of U.S. intelligence officials who have said Moscow is behind the hacks (that said, there have hardly been any new WaPo and NYT reports on the issue since Trump launched his Syrian attack).
Trump first made the allegation on the eve of the Nov. 8 presidential election, when he said that China could have hacked the emails of his rivals.