The Chinese government has long resented accusations that, as US President Donald Trump put it in a tweet in early January, it “won’t help with North Korea”.
On Wednesday China’s foreign minister used a colourful metaphor to describe his government’s position on the crisis-prone Korean peninsula, likening Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington to “runaway trains” that Beijing was doing its best to stop.
The press conference by Wang Yi also marked the first time that a senior Chinese government official has commented substantively on the Korean crisis since last month’s assassination in Kuala Lumpur of Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, and a series of missile tests by the reclusive nation.