Most notably, this round of nuclear and missile tests triggered China to seriously review its approach to how best protect its interest in and aspirations for the Korean peninsula. Indications that China would review its policies toward North Korea also followed the DPRK’s nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, but in both cases Beijing eventually decided to stick with its existing policy.

This time around Beijing seems more willing to persist with a new policy stance. The signs of change in Beijing include allowing an unusual degree of transparency during visits by two North Korean emissaries — its senior military leader in May and vice foreign minister Kim Kye-gwan in June — to emphasise that both received the same stern message: China wanted to see Pyongyang re-engage in negotiations, including on the nuclear question. In between these visits, Chinese President Xi and US President Obama agreed at their informal summit in California on 8–9 June that the Six-Party Talks should be reconvened and, most importantly, that neither country could accept the DPRK as a nuclear-armed state. There have also been reports that Beijing has blocked banking channels considered to be closely associated with the DPRK’s nuclear program.

Better late than never is nearly always true, but China must be aware that reversing Pyongyang’s nuclear program will be even harder now than a decade ago. With both the United States and China now signalling that Pyongyang’s desire to be accepted and engaged as a nuclear-armed state is out of reach, the DPRK has reverted to characterising the reversal of its nuclear program as part of the global quest for nuclear disarmament, confirming that getting past its nuclear program will remain a protracted and possibly uncertain business. Still, if China is now prepared to really press Pyongyang to return to the Six-Party Talks it is also timely to review the modalities of this forum. China has ‘hosted’ the Six-Party Talks since they began in 2003. While this suited Chinese interests at the time, it also positioned China above the talks, an interested party but not a primary player directly involved in developing proposals and investing those proposals with its authority. The other players went along with this arrangement, as it reassured the DPRK and softened the fact that China’s priorities regarding the DPRK did not strongly match those of the US, ROK and Japan. North Korean aggression in 2010, and China’s insulation of Pyongyang from the repercussions, starkly exposed these differences to the point where the viability of the Six-Party Talks — which were already suspended — became open to question. But now that China’s interests seems to be moving closer toward the interests of the other parties and it is evident that China is giving priority to ending the DPRK’s nuclear program, it is time to look critically at the structure of the Six-Party process.

Specifically, who should take primary responsibility for these negotiations? If the answer is the players with the biggest stake in the outcome, then the two Koreas — not China or anyone else — should be responsible and should be the ones to drive negotiations. This would clear the air and release China to be more transparent about its interests and aspirations for the Korean peninsula, and to put its full weight behind proposals that it considers genuinely responsive to DPRK interests and concerns. It would also minimise Pyongyang’s scope to muddy the waters and divide the other parties by seeking to make US–DPRK discussions the primary axis of negotiation. Finally, it would open the Six-Party Talks up to tackling the wider agenda on the Korean peninsula, some aspects of which will probably have to be addressed in parallel with the nuclear question.

As host of the earlier Six-Party Talks and as North Korea’s closest ally, it is up to China to signal that a change in the format of the Six-Party Talks is in order and to convince a reluctant Pyongyang to share responsibility for these negotiations with Seoul.

Ron Huisken is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, the Australian National University.