China's Role in the Regional and International Management of Korean Conflict: An Arbiter or Catalyser?

North Korea’s increasing nuclear and missile threats are reshaping entire Northeast Asian security and its effects goes well beyond the region. North Korea had several incentives and challenges along the way towards nuclearization and other related actors that tried to prevent this happening have exercised numerous methods and ways. China has always been the key for both those actors who trying to stop North Korean nuclear proliferation and for North Korea who has been racing towards nuclearization. China has twisted between arbiter and catalyser roles over the years. China’s relations with North Korea and its crisis/conflict management approaches have indeed affected the course of the problem evolving form a super fiction into a real proliferation danger while at the same time it has pressured North Korea along with the international community. However, this Chinese two-faced actions and reactions to North Korean nuclear and missile tests and its calculations, interests, and goals are still understudied. Therefore, this paper aims at providing a systematic understanding of Chinese restraining and encouraging role in the conflict and North Korean changing positions at the strategic leverage and strategic burden nexus in Chinese geopolitics by decoding Chinese responses to North Korean nuclear and missile tests. Accordingly, the paper surveys Chinese foreign policy towards North Korean nuclear and missile tests within two domains: International and Regional. By comparing and contrasting these two level of management, the paper seeks to understand regional and international nexus of Chinese policy towards North Korean nuclearization.