BEIJING GAMES: Don’t Count on China’s Support on North Korea, U.S. Panel Says.

Despite concerns over North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile programs, China remains the country’s largest trading partner and differs with the U.S. over the best way to handle Kim Jong Un’s reclusive regime, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in the report published Wednesday.

“The United States and the international community should keep their expectations low,” according to the report, “given China’s lackluster record of previous sanctions enforcement and continued sanctions violations by Chinese companies exporting dual-use items to North Korea.”

China faces a dilemma enforcing sanctions “in wanting to see some reform in the North Korean economy and not wanting to see a collapse,” panel commissioner Larry Wortzel told reporters before the report’s release. “We think their cooperation and exercise of sanctions will be fairly limited” by “what they see as their own national interest.”

Since Chinese support for North Korea has killed nuclear nonproliferation in northeast Asia, perhaps it’s time we considering helping our friends in the region — Japan, South Korea, and especially Taiwan — become just as well-armed.