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Article snippet: BEIJING — What the Chinese call the Friendship Pipeline runs for 20 miles, crossing under the Yalu River and spanning the border between China. For more than half a century, it has been both a symbol of the two nations’ alliance and a lifeline for the North’s economy. Now, in response to North Korea’s latest and most powerful nuclear test, the Trump administration is expected to press China to impose an oil embargo on the North, cutting off the flow of petroleum through the pipeline and on tankers, too. The United States has called for similar measures before, and Beijing has almost always refused. But no previous American administration has pressed the case as an implicit choice between cutting off the fuel and potential military action. That puts President Xi Jinping of China in a particularly difficult position. With an important Communist Party leadership conference next month, he will not want to look weak in the face of American pressure. But a destabilizing war on the Korean Peninsula would be even less welcome. “Xi cannot afford to look like he is caving in under U.S. pressure,” said Zhang Baohui, a professor of international relations at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “He needs something back from the U.S. to make the Chinese cooperation less costly to its image and geopolitical interests.” Mr. Zhang said that if Mr. Trump agreed to a version of a strategy proposed by China to ease the crisis — a freeze of the North’s nuclear program in exchange for su... Link to the full article to read more