Updated below
There are dozens of recent reports which assert that China's new president has somehow rebuffed North Korea's stand up against the U.S. driven campaign against it. A close reading of Xi's speech shows that these reports are wrong. Xi was clearly talking about U.S. aggressiveness, not about North Korea's. The misreading of Xi's speech is characteristic for a U.S. centered media. They never seem able to understand that U.S. action in the world is perceived much different than what the selfish U.S. propaganda they distribute says.
The culprits:
Reuters: China rebukes North Korea, says no state should sow chaos
China's leaders issued thinly veiled rebukes to North Korea for raising regional tensions, with the president saying no country should throw the world into chaos and the foreign minister warning that Beijing would not allow mischief on its doorstep.
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No country "should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain", President Xi Jinping told a forum on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. He did not name North Korea but he appeared to refer to Pyongyang.
LA Times: China signals North Korea to stop throwing the 'world into chaos'
In a sign of China’s exasperation with its rogue ally, North Korea, newly installed Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday condemned nations that throw the “world into chaos.”
Without mentioning North Korea by name, Xi told delegates at an international forum in Boao, southern Hainan province: “No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains.’’
WaPo: Chinese President Xi Jinping expresses concern over North Korea’s rhetoric
Responding to regional worries over North Korea’s bellicose threats, China on Sunday expressed concern and what appeared to be veiled criticism of its longtime ally.
“No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said at an economic forum in Hainan province. Avoiding mentioning North Korea by name, Xi said, “While pursuing its own interests, a country should accommodate the legitimate interests of others.”
NY Times: China Hints at Limits to North Korea Actions
In an indirect but clear reference to the North Korean crisis, China’s president,Xi Jinping, said Sunday that world peace should not be put at risk because of a single country.
“No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain,” Mr. Xi said in a speech at an annual regional business forum in Boao, China. Mr. Xi did not single out any countries or disputes, but in separate remarks, China’s Foreign Ministry repeated its “grave concern” over the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
All the above sources assume that Xi actually meant North Korea when he said "No one should be allowed …" But what is the evidence for that?
The CSM gets nearer to the truth: China's Xi signals limited shift away from North Korea
In a speech Sunday, Chinese President Xi Jinping insisted that “no one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains.”
That was a slap at both North Korea and the United States, whose current military maneuvers in South Korea first prompted Pyongyang’s vitriolic response, say Chinese scholars. “He was trying to kill two birds with one stone, but his primary target was North Korea,” explains Professor Cheng.
A closer reading of the official translation of the speech shows that the part that includes the "no one…" phrase is clearly about global superpowers and global governance, not about a minor impoverished mountainous range on China's southern border:
The international community should advocate the vision of comprehensive security, common security and cooperative security so as to turn our global village into a big stage for common development, rather than an arena where gladiators fight each other. And no one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains. With growing interaction among countries, it is inevitable that they encounter frictions here and there. What is important is that they should resolve differences through dialogue, consultation and peaceful negotiations in the larger interest of the sound growth of their relations.
This paragraph is certainly not about North Korea. North Korea is not a "gladiator" in the global arena. The paragraph is about global governance and global actors who operate outside the governance framework that Xi envisions. That could only mean that Xi was pointing at the United States and its campaigns against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria.
Confirming my take is an editorial in today's People's Daily, one of China's official newspapers. The rough automated translation:
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote talk at the Boao Forum, said: "The international community should promote comprehensive security, common security, the concept of cooperative security and seek common development on the big stage, so that our global village, rather than mutually wrestling arena, more can not be selfish to confuse a region and the world. "During this speech, the last sentence of the subject discusses the most interesting, the Chinese and foreign media have speculated, who harbor" selfish "? Who in trying to mess up a region and the world "?
In fact, such speculation does not make much sense. The thrust of the original words to promote a new concept of international security, against the narrow, isolated, absolute security concept.
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Review the security situation in the world in the new century, a lot of "hot spots" and "chaos point". Which, when the devaluation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the two places have been chaotic than ten years,
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Western countries is considerable excitement in the beginning, to fan the flames, direct military intervention against Libya. Since then, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and other countries have emerged new social integration is characterized by "Islamic", which is something that Western countries did not expect. Syria's chaos has lasted for two years, the situation is still deadlocked.
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So the People's Daily is clearly pointing out that it is not North Korea that saws chaos for "selfish gain", but the United States and its allies. It is those countries that Xi rebuked, not North Korea.
The Chinese, like me, will have asked who is actually provoking in the Korea stand-off. From their point of view it is clear that the U.S. created this crisis and is escalating it bit by bit. By now the White House has even acknowledged that these escalations are part of a planned campaign:
The U.S. is putting a pause to what several officials described as a step-by-step plan the Obama administration approved earlier this year, dubbed "the playbook," that laid out the sequence and publicity plans for U.S. shows of force during annual war games with South Korea. The playbook included well-publicized flights in recent weeks near North Korea by nuclear-capable B-52 and stealth B-2 bombers, as well as advanced F-22 warplanes.
The U.S. has planned the current crisis and even written a "playbook" for its escalation. Nuclear capable B-52 and B-2 are a clear threat to North Korea. It is no wonder that it responds to such threats by upping its own propaganda.
China is concerned about the Korea crisis. But if that concern influenced that paragraph in Xi's speech at all it did so in a rebuke to the United States not to North Korea. China Will Not Help To "Punish" North Korea.
That mainstream U.S. media have read the Xi speech differently just shows their sorry intellectual state and their inability to see the world, not through their own propaganda glasses, but through the eyes of the "other".
UPDATE: Xinhua now carries an official but shortened translation of the above mentioned Chinese piece: Xi's security outlook. The core that points to the U.S.:
This new concept of shared security is in stark contrast to the parochial approach, which tends to view security based on one's own interests and needs. Driven by such an undesirable approach, a country will always calculate its own gains first whenever there is a regional or global security crisis.
From the Syria crisis to maritime territorial disputes in the East and South China seas, in the final analysis many of the world's security woes today can, one way or another, be traced back to the pursuit of selfish gains in disregard of regional and global security needs.