UN action along with talks is the way to solve DPRK issue

The message was clear. As President Xi Jinping told his US counterpart Donald Trump on the phone on Wednesday, China remains "unswervingly committed to denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, and preserving the international nuclear nonproliferation regime".

The message was crucial, too, because it came at a time when the international community is racking its brain over how to respond to Pyongyang's latest, and most serious, nuclear provocation.

The last thing Beijing wants to see is a war - and the subsequent chaos and refugee exodus - which, besides raising security and humanitarian concerns, would exact an unbearable cost on China's Northeast, which is already struggling economically.