south korea s president. yesterday president trump took a swipe at president moon suggesting that his policy of appeasement just won t work, so there appears to be a very badly timed rift between the u.s. and south korea. president trump also suggested that one weapon that the u.s. might deploy is trade. that any country doing business with north korea would not be able to trade with the united states. this is directed at china. the main patron for north korea. it s unclear whether china will exercise some of the moves that it can. namely, cutting off oil shipments to north korea because, of course, they don t want to trigger regime collapse, which could mean thousands of refugees across the boarder and geopolitical rebalancing in the region. you can t help but think kim jong un is trying to push as far as he can to see what he can do here because it seems like one provocation after another. we re going to have to wait and see what unfolds the next couple of days. thank you. as tex
he is the author of the book meltdown. could you please shed some light on china s position in all of this? because china has always said to be the single country that has the most leverage over north korea. and china has been either reluctant or unable to use its leverage over the past year to limit to put a cap on all this military testing in north korea. well, the characterization of china is both accurate but not completely accurate. the chinese do have leverage because most north korean trade and fuel supplies and so on all go through china. but for a variety of reasons the chinese see the north korean issue quite differently than the united states. they are ultimately most worried about the possibility of regime collapse of turmoil, leading to
strategic decision on how to move forward on this whether by diplomacy or whatever other way is better than diplomacy. but most people think it should be diplomacy. thank you so much. christiane amanpour, cnn s chief international correspondent. thanks. christiane talking there about china and their philosophy toward north korea. andrew stevens is in china. and first of all, interesting that christiane brought up the point that china although has been pressured by the united states and other countries in the region has not put the pressure these countries would like to see on north korea because they were concerned about regime collapse and it seemed like that was more of a concern than a nuclear north korea. has there been any response from china as of yet? no response as yet, natalie. but that equation that christiane talked about is very much what you hear in china, that strategically, they see a
he s got to have people who he feels are going to be unquestionably loyal to him, who are not going to undermine him, who are going to protect him under all circumstances. and that s something which analysts say china is hoping for as well. the chinese are believed to dislike kim and disapprove of his nuclear buildup, but many experts believe the schchinese would rather see him in place with nuclear weapons than see him loose his power or the regime collapse and have millions of chinese at the border. thanks. we want to turn to what we re seeing in texas and the recovery from harvey and now this political fight here. new jersey governor chris christie on cnn said senator ted cruz is telling lies while being surrounded by harvey storm survivors. next you ll hear a response from
hydrogen bomb-powered north korea, why would they give them little bits, if you will, or give them the know-how to build this? well, they ve done it since the 50s and 60s and 70s. today i think north korea has really advanced its knowledge, not necessarily with china helping, but china does not have interest in nuclear north korea. it s just that china s interests is so different from ours in that their priority number one is not letting the north korean regime collapse. so it s not that they want nuclear north korea. but where our priority number one is not letting north korea go nuclear, china s priority and interest number one is stability and preventing region collapse. and that will lead to unification. south korea-led unification and unified korea that s pro-united states, obviously. as we look at that moving