China and the United States are becoming increasingly vocal about their points of tension: The U.S. secretary of defense recently declared that Beijing is Washington’s top “pacing challenge,” and representatives from both countries heatedly accused each other of misdeeds during an Alaska summit last month.

Now, experts say that China’s choice to appoint Liu Xiaoming — a man once called a “wolf warrior” diplomat for speaking out against Western governments — to work on Korean Peninsula affairs shows that China is further injecting itself into the North Korea conversation to represent its own interests.