HONG KONG -- At long last, the four major powers in East Asia and the two Koreas aim to honor Clause 60 of the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement. Clause 60 was supposed to have been implemented within three months of the July 27, 1953, signing of the ceasefire in the war. Now the stage looks set in Beijing late this month for "a political conference of a higher level . . . to ensure the peaceful settlement of the Korean question."

The six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear-weapons development confirm that China, very belatedly, has gotten itself diplomatically involved in an issue that ought to be of deep concern to it. Just how much influence China wields in Pyongyang is an endless source of debate. The state of the North's economy allows China more direct influence than any other nation, yet Beijing has seemed far too sanguine over the nuclear controversy.

If North Korea is allowed to go nuclear, Beijing will face a region in which Japan and South Korea -- and possibly even Taiwan -- will become more inclined to consider nuclear options. It appears that such calculations have finally aroused a degree of urgency in the Chinese leadership. This explains Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo's recent visits to Pyongyang and Washington, which played a crucial role in getting agreement to have the six-nation talks.