By Tom Plate

In case North Korea's leaders haven't noticed, the Wolfowitz is at the door. As in Paul Wolfowitz, the articulate U.S. deputy defense secretary. He recently repeated in Singapore the new American line that when confronting evil, force is always an option never to be taken off the table.

North Korea, Pyongyang's leaders may recall, is a charter member of President Bush's "axis of evil" club. North Korean leader Kim Jong Il need only check with Saddam Hussein (if he can find him) if unclear about whether this post-9/11 warrior administration is serious about backing up its threats.

But the ''Wolf,'' in remarks at the Asian security conference May 31, was not all hawk. North Korea, he implied, should look no further than China for an escape route from isolation and misery.

"Twenty-five years ago, China pointed the way for how a failed Communist system can undertake a process of reform without collapsing," he said. "That is the course North Korea needs to pursue." This formula was pointedly echoed just days later by Yoon Young-kwan, South Korea's foreign minister: "Like China, the North should open its economy even if it maintains control on politics."

Isn't it remarkable how China, once a billion-strong backwater, has suddenly become the model for "reform without regime change"? But the kudos are not undeserved. Two decades of growth have lifted more people out of poverty more quickly than in recorded history. Even so, because China's economy is running into difficulty now, North Korea should take the Wolfowitz/Yoon route sooner rather than later. For if China runs out of go-go steam, political instability could be just around the corner. If that happens, North Korea might just as well fight it out rather than reform its way out.

Alas, cracks are already beginning to show. RAND senior economist Charles Wolf, whose eagerly awaited book on China's economy is due out soon, is now worried: "The SARS epidemic, while apparently abating, provides an unwanted addition to the already full plate of challenges confronting China's economy and its leadership. The system's capacity to digest this fare will be sorely tested in the months and years ahead."

The worries of this Wolf appear to be reflected in roiling domestic Chinese politics. The authorities are foolishly beating anew the dead horses of "Taiwan as rebellious teenager" and "Tokyo as incurable imperialist."

Recently, on the same day, on the same page, China Daily, the English-language newspaper still under Communist Party control, ran major articles condemning Taipei's campaign to sneak into the World Health Organization on the SARS-crisis carpet and Tokyo's continued refusal to hand over the long-disputed Diaoyu Islands. The very fact that Beijing would choose this moment to pick a fight with Taiwan, with which mutually advantageous economic cooperation is improving every day, and with Tokyo, with which it desperately needs to mend fences and improve relations, is telling. The new government of Hu Jintao, now in some difficulty, is attempting to keep its people at bay with stupid and strident nationalistic appeals.

Why should any American care about this?

For the simple reason that a prosperous China adds to American prosperity in many ways: Its low-cost goods, from Toys-R-Us to Heier appliances, in effect constitute a substantial subsidy to the American middle class stretching its consumer dollar. Another reason is that a prosperous China is a stable China, and a stable China will eventually lure North Korea into reforming. This would obviate the need for war on the Korean peninsula — a bloody prospect at best. And that would save many American — not to mention Korean — lives.

But will it be war or peace? Wolfowitz, who in his subtle clenched-fist way sounds more and more like a non-accented Kissinger, insists Washington prefers peace on the peninsula. But the Hu Jintao government is not sure; neither are many South (not to mention North) Koreans. Whatever the truth, Bush will probably want to be re-elected before picking a second fight.

Clearly, America needs to tone down its Incredible Hulk image.

"Despite some of the differences in perspective that the senior minister described last night," argued Wolfowitz in his speech, "I believe the United States and its allies and partners in Northeast Asia can agree on an outcome that serves all our interests." But that won't happen if American diplomacy is being reduced to nothing more than a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Tom Plate, whose column appears regularly in The Honolulu Advertiser, is a professor at UCLA. Reach him at tplate@ucla.edu. He also has a spot on the Web.