Six-party talks

And so they used to just vote in the studio, but then they had a national vote where you could get on a QR code and vote, and seventy-five million Chinese voted, and they shut the show down [laughs].

And I, I had breakfast a day or two later with a Chinese ambassador and asked him about it, and he sort of hesitated, and he said, "Eh, turns out the Chinese do like to vote." [laughs] North Korea, during the six-party talks, one of the North Korean envoys, as we were looking at ways to give a negative security assurance or otherwise, to your point, without violating our principles or pretending we're happy with a Stalinist brutal regime, looking for ways to signal that we were not pursuing active near-term regime change, and we were floating different ideas, and the North Korean negotiator said, "Those are all poisoned carrots.

We're not interested."

Hmm.

One view was, well, it reassures them, so it's a good way to lubricate trade and other agreements.

The other view, which would have been my view, and I actually had a chance to meet Secretary Kerry and tell him this, and then he showed me the door, is that no, you're playing into China's narrative.

And Xi Jinping's personal narrative about China's greatness and so on and so forth, and we had similar things in the six-party talks and have repeatedly with North Korea.

So how do you, how would you recommend diplomats, or even President Trump, address this in summits with a Kim Jong Un or a Xi Jinping? Should America be steering clear of in any way dignifying the nature of these regimes, or is there a sort of non-ideological way to do it? Because i- it's almost impossible to thread that needle.

He served as the National Intelligence Officer for North Korea on the NIC, the National Intelligence Council.

You had all these positions, but you were most notably Special Envoy for Six-Party Talks and Director for Korea on the National Security Council.

So one of the few folks from the government who has operated both on the intel side as well as on the policy side.

Also joining us today is Bonny Lin.

It doesn't logically follow that China would be happy that North Korea has its nuclear program.

But the question is, what can China manage at this point, given that Kim seems pretty set on its nuclear program? And I think right now the Chinese are willing to accept it if it could come at the cost of much more improved China-North Korea relations, which is, I think, what President Xi is trying to do, improve relations at the highest levels, kind of actually similar to what he's trying to do with President Trump, have him and these high-level meetings really set the tone for a positive relationship.

So would it be fair to say now that deep the chinese talking about denuclearization will become a signpost of how unhappy they are with their relationship with north korea i mean in other words it was sort of standard talking point like they would just adopt it like the u.s like all the members of the six-party talks adopted it right but now that it's kind of fallen off as we look to the future if they start talking about it again that's a sign that they're unhappy with north korean actions like belligerent actions or their unhappy with the bilateral relationship is that is that fair to say

I think so and the other thing to add to that is whether if with China starts talking about if it's also a sign of unhappiness towards the United States we've seen some more we've seen a a scholar on China-North Korea relations, Xu Xinluo, she wrote a piece recently that argues that historically you've seen more Chinese willingness to put pressure on North Korea when the U.S. has provided more reassurances to China on Taiwan.