Trump has long said North Korea is China's problem to fix, urging Beijing to use its leverage as the main provider of food and energy for the impoverished North to bring the recalcitrant regime under control.
Reports in South Korea claim the US President is bolstering the deployment by sending the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Nimitz to the Sea of Japan next week.
It comes as Trump warned North Korea that it needs to keep its nuclear ambitions in check, telling dictator Kim Jong-un he has "got to behave".
The Ronald Reagan, whose home port is Yokosuka, Japan, is part of the Seventh Fleet and is regularly deployed around the western Pacific.
He called North Korea the most urgent and unsafe threat to the peace and security of the Asia-Pacific region.
There are fears Pyongyang is preparing to carry out a sixth nuclear test. Pence has met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol ratcheted up the rhetoric in an interview with the BBC.
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Jean-Marie Le Pen and conservative Jacques Chirac emerged the two winners in the first round of that election. He offers a vision of gradual economic deregulation that would cause few ripples on global financial markets.
Following the bilateral meeting between the United States and China, Pence told Abe that his country shares a sense of crisis with China and hopes China will respond to further pressure.
"While all our options are on the table, President Trump is determined to work closely with Japan, with South Korea, with all our allies in the region, and with China to achieve a peaceful resolution and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula".
"China continues to have both economic and political influence" over North Korea, Spicer said.
The Obama administration's basic policy of "strategic patience" held that the US government would not engage in dialogue unless North Korea took concrete actions toward denuclearization. But no one was predicting what might come next.
Ayrault, who was in China last week and whose country has no diplomatic representation in North Korea, said it appeared that Beijing was increasingly anxious by the behavior of its neighbor.
China has always been reluctant to use its leverage for fear that pushing the regime too hard could result in instability in the North and even its collapse, which could lead to the emergence of a pro-U.S. nation on its border.
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