有提到网易专题哦China Moves to Ensure Stability in North Korea

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/world/asia/china-moves-to-ensure-stability-in-north-korea.html?_r=2&ref=world
BEIJING — China, North Korea’s foremost ally, appears to be moving quickly to try to ensure stability in a crippled and isolated nation now facing a leadership transition fraught with dangers.
According to former government officials and analysts, both Chinese and foreign, China’s leaders had been hoping that Kim Jong-il, who died on Saturday, would live for at least another two or three years to solidify the succession process that he had begun with his youngest son, Kim Jong-un. Uncertainty now looms, not only over whether the younger Kim can consolidate his power in the face of competing elite factions, but also whether the elder Kim’s economic initiatives will continue, which had included several visits to China to study it as a model for possible economic reforms.
So, the analysts and former officials say, the Chinese are seeking to deepen their influence over senior North Korean officials, particularly in the military, and to use the channels they have kept open with North Korea even as the West, frustrated over its nuclear intransigence, closed doors. Perhaps China’s highest priority is one shared far more broadly: guarding against a rise in tensions on the divided Korean peninsula. That is a distinct possibility if generals in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, try to reinforce their hold on power through aggression toward South Korea.
“At this moment, China might provide the best chance of stability,” said Robert Carlin, a former State Department official and fellow at Stanford University who travels to North Korea.
“They want to be the best informed and have a modicum of influence and have people consulting with them at this moment,” Mr. Carlin said. “The rest of us are deaf, dumb, blind and with our arms tied behind our backs.”
John Delury, a scholar of China and the two Koreas at Yonsei University in Seoul, said: “Chinese diplomats are the only ones who can pick up the phone and talk to North Korean counterparts about what is going on, what to expect. This reveals the fatal weakness in Washington and Seoul’s over-reliance on sanctions over the past three years.”
China values North Korea as a buffer state that keeps the American troops in South Korea at a distance, but relations between the two communist countries have endured complicated twists in recent years. Chinese officials were upset by North Korea’s sudden shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in South Korea in late 2010, and have lobbied North Korean leaders to refrain from further military actions, analysts say. Earlier in 2010, China was put in an awkward position when South Korea and the United States accused North Korea of sinking the Cheonan, a South Korean warship, with a torpedo. The United States pressured China to agree with its allegation, which China refused to do. North Korea denied any involvement.
Those episodes, while increasing strains, have also made North Korea more dependent on China. China and South Korea recently accounted for 55 percent to 80 percent of North Korea’s trade, according to a paper published this year by two scholars of North Korea at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland. After the Cheonan sinking, most of North Korea’s trade with South Korea stopped, making China an even bigger partner.
Exact trade figures are difficult to pinpoint. A paper published in December 2010 by the Congressional Research Service estimated that in 2009, exports from North Korea to China increased to $793 million, while Chinese exports to the North slowed slightly to $1.9 billion. Chinese trade and investment undercut the economic sanctions that the United States and other nations imposed on North Korea to try to halt its nuclear program.
The trade can take many forms. Susan Shirk, a former State Department official and professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, said she had spoken with a North Korean man in Pyongyang in September who was conducting state-to-state trade with China. She said the man worked for the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and he was selling iron ore to China at the price that China pays to large trade partners like Australia; in return, he was buying corn from China at the price on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that day.
North Korean leaders are also trying to jump-start the languishing trade zone of Rason on the Chinese border and to get Chinese businesses to invest in tourism infrastructure, including a creaking cruise ship running between Rason and the Mount Kumgang nature park.
“China and North Korea are locked in this dance of interdependency,” said Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, an analyst based in Beijing for the International Crisis Group. “China is going to have to continue to be a big benefactor and bankroll North Korea to a big extent.”
On Monday, as anxieties over North Korea’s path bubbled to the surface in Beijing, so did signs of mourning. People brought bouquets of white flowers to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing and were allowed inside. Police officers surrounding the building kept all others at a distance. Asked about visas, a guard said, “Come back next year.” The flag atop the embassy roof was lowered to half-staff. One resident of Beijing with ties to North Korea said telephone operators in Pyongyang were crying when he got through to a call center there.
Evening newspapers in China ran front-page headlines above photographs of Mr. Kim. Xinhua, the state news agency, cited a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, giving the official position on Mr. Kim’s death. Mr. Kim was a “great leader,” Mr. Ma said, and “China and North Korea will strive together to continue making positive contributions.”
There were some irreverent takes. Netease, a popular Internet portal, ran a topics page with a headline saying: “Kim Jong-il’s Death Shows the Importance of Losing Weight.” The subtitle was even more subversive: “A government is just like a human body, in that neither can afford to be too fat.” As of Monday evening, the page was still online.
Michael Wines contributed reporting, and Li Bibo and Mia Lia contributed research.

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