Korean peninsula arms race is heating up. How will China react in 2026?

As the new year unfolds, China finds itself grappling with strategic pressures fuelled by two US treaty allies at its doorstep – Japan and South Korea. In the second of a two-part series, Seong Hyeon Choi looks at how competing pressures in the Korean peninsula may complicate China’s security calculus. Read the first part here. In 2025, there was a major shift in China’s security environment relating to the Korean peninsula, as the North grew more open in its push for nuclear weapons and the...