China said to be considering oil sanctions on North Korea

China was said to be considering tougher sanctions against North Korea after its ally to the south claimed it had detonated a hydrogen bomb on Sunday.

Frustrations between Beijing and Pyongyang had grown of late as Kim Jong-un refused to abandon his plans for nuclear armament, lending credence to claims that lines of communication between the two nations had broken down.

In the past, the Hermit Kingdom had kept Chinese authorities abreast of its plans to carry out any nuclear testing but the practice allegedly stopped after the fourth test in January 2016. North Korea even failed to warn Beijing of its fifth test in September 2016 despite a North Korean senior official being in Beijing just a short time beforehand.

The ramping up of North Korea's nuclear programme led the United Nations Security Council to consider stronger action against the rogue state in order to impede its drive to breach the thermonuclear threshhold, with US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley saying at an emergency session of the Security Council on Monday that Kim was "begging for war."

In 2003, China cut off oil supplies to North Korea in order to force it into a negotiating position and according to the South China Morning Post, an unnamed Beijing-based diplomat believed that it was likely to do so again in the wake of the significant pressure being brought to bear on Chinese president Xi Jinping by Seoul and Washington to do so again, even after he agreed to sanctions on trade in coal, seafood, iron and iron ore.

China exported an estimated 520,000 tonnes of crude oil to North Korea in 2015 whereas its other trade partner, Russia supplied approximately 40,000 tonnes of oil and oil products every quarter.

Beijing was foot dragging when asked to support stronger sanctions against Pyongyang as it did not want to see the regime toppled, fearing it could trigger an influx of refugees flooding Chinese border cities, as well as potentially leading to South Korea, a US ally, taking control of the North.

"There will be sanctions, but it will not be a full cut off oil supplies. China is not looking for the collapse of the regime. It just wants to push for peace talks, so cutting North Korea's lifeline in oil does not fit China's aim," said Wang Sheng, a professor of Korean affairs at Jilin University.

Zhang Liangui, a professor of international strategic research at the Central Party School, China's communist party training institution, told the South China Morning Post, "North Korea doesn't really care about what China said it would do to them because they know China’s stance very well," before leaving off on a decidedly grim note of, "the outlook of having this issue resolved is dim. It will very much depend on whether the US decides to take military action."