Can China help de-escalate tensions between the U.S. and North Korea?

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American warships are heading for waters outside North Korea, but what the plan is for those ships is unclear.

But what is not ambiguous is North Korea's intentions. The state media warned of nuclear attacks on American targets at any sign of aggression from the U.S.

Some analysts believe the linchpin in defusing this escalating standoff is China.

U.S. President Donald Trump has put pressure on the Chinese government to help discourage North Korea's nuclear program.

This latest aggressive tweet by Trump asserting his threats is alarming to University of Alberta professor Wenran Jiang.

"This is very serious because just after these tweets the Chinese president Xi Jinping barely finished the summit with Trump last week … and basically tells him that the Chinese will not pursue anything other than a peaceful solution and is willing to work with the United States," Jiang tells The Current's guest host Piya Chattopadhyay.

"And so this is not something China takes lightly. Therefore we need to monitor the situation in a very, very high alert situation here." 

Jiang says the misconception by the U.S. government, and other Western powers, that "China somehow is part of the problem and holds the key to the solution of the North Korean crisis" needs to be corrected. 

"China does not have total control of North Korean regime. Yes, China is providing lifelines to North Korea for its survival, for his economic you know activities but that does not translate to the whole control of the behavior, of the regime, or Kim Jong-un," he says.

"China has a troubled relationship with North Korea. China doesn't like nuclearization of North Korea at all but it has limited options."

Jiang explains China does not think the North Korean nuclear crisis is a threat: it's primarily an issue between North Korea and the U.S.

"So China does not want to take the blame."

Jiang says at the same time, China does not want to be perceived as the puppet by Washington to force regime change.

Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Washington think tank, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, adds that while it's clear China does not to control North Korea's behaviour, they do hold a lot of leverage.

"I think about 90 per cent of [North Korea's] trade is from China that suggests that it's a large amount of leverage. I would just dispute that the trade will equal lifelines."

He tells Chattopadhyay that more robust sanctions could be the solution since it's clear China is allowing North Korea to evade sanctions.

"We had a case in September of Chinese banks doing millions of dollars of transactions through the United States for six years and that's not the only examples," he says.

"Things like that would be easy for the United States to close those loopholes if the Chinese are not willing to do that."

But Jiang disagrees tougher sanctions will be the way out of this, saying China doesn't want to deal with what could lead to a regime collapse.

"That will not be in the interest of anybody other than the United States and Western preference."

Listen to the full segment at the top of this post — including tracking the human rights abuses in North Korea.

This segment was produced by The Current's Lara O'Brien and Sam Colbert.