By Patrick BAERT
North Korea's escalating nuclear provocations are putting putative ally China in an increasing bind, and may be part of a strategy to twist Beijing's arm into orchestrating direct talks between Pyongyang and Washington, analysts said.
The North's Kim dynasty has repeatedly used nuclear brinkmanship over the years in a push to be taken seriously by the United States but traditionally avoided causing major embarrassment to China, its sole major ally and economic lifeline.
But leader Kim Jong-Un's detonation Sunday of what he called a hydrogen bomb marked the second time this year that the 33-year-old family scion upstaged Chinese President Xi Jinping just as he was hosting a carefully choreographed international gathering.
Communist propaganda deifies Xi as an infallible father figure, but Kim's actions are puncturing the facade and exposing the Chinese leader's impotence toward the nuclear crisis on his doorstep.
"North Korea's repeated nuclear and missile tests have put China in a more and more difficult position," said Shi Yinhong, Director of the Center for American Studies at Renmin University in Beijing.
Shi said Kim -- who has never met Xi -- had become "more and more hostile towards China" after Beijing signed on to tougher new international sanctions against Pyongyang.
That has apparently made Kim more willing to bring pressure on Xi, said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political science professor at Hong Kong Baptist University.
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