North Korea and President Trump are like two accelerating trains bound to crash into each other, according to China, which sees itself as the only "signalman" able to avert catastrophe. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned Wednesday of a "looming crisis" on the Korean peninsula and wondered: "Are the two sides really ready for a head-on collision?" reports the Guardian. Wang, speaking the day after the US deployed the controversial THAAD anti-missile system, said that to avoid the collision, Pyongyang should stop missile tests and "nuclear activity," and the US should stop conducting "military exercises of enormous scale" with South Korea.
John Delury, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Yonsei University, tells the Washington Post that the "suspension for suspension" idea is one that has been pitched before, though not with Trump as president. "We don't know what Trump is going to do about North Korea," he says. "There is a policy review underway now, and it looks like all options are on the table." Other analysts say it appears that with China increasingly worried about Korean developments, Wang has publicly raised the issue now to put pressure on the Trump administration ahead of Rex Tillerson's visit to China later this month. (North Korea says its recent missile launches were practice tests for strikes on American bases.)