Monday, November 29, 1999

North Korea`s Kim visits Chinese port city, Tianjin

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-il toured the Chinese port city of Tianjin on Wednesday ahead of talks with government leaders expected to focus on reviving the North's feeble economy.Reclusive Kim is also expected to discuss a return to nuclear disarmament negotiations during this, his first trip abroad since a suspected stroke in 2008, but any bold move is unlikely.He crossed the border on Monday in his special train, and toured docks near the gleaming coastal city of Dalian, a model for China's industrial renewal. Tianjin, too, is a showcase of Chinese incentives for port, banking and technology investment.Kim's last visit to China in 2006 brought effusive promises of economic cooperation between the two neighbours, as well as broad vows from the North Korean leader to seek progress towards "denuclearisation". There have been few signs of either.In a possible sign of Chinese impatience with Pyongyang, a Chinese ambassador visited South Korea's reunification ministry on Tuesday to mark increasingly close strategic cooperation with Seoul. He pledged future development in friendly relations with South Korea, the Chinese embassy in Seoul said in a note on its website.Tensions have increased on the Korean peninsula following the sinking of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, apparently hit by a North Korean torpedo on March 26.On Tuesday, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak came close to openly blaming North Korea for the sinking, which killed 46 sailors, but also made clear he was not about to order a retaliatory strike.China will also urge a return to six-party talks on nuclear disarmament that Pyongyang has boycotted for over a year. The six-party talks bring together North and South Korea, China, the United States, Japan and Russia.Neither Beijing nor Pyongyang has confirmed Kim's latest trip abroad. Police attempted to prevent reporters from filming it.ECONOMYChina is a crucial economic and political backer of its smaller neighbour, which it fears could become a dire burden if 68-year-old Kim's regime falls apart and spills refugees into northeast China.The choice of Dalian, with its foreign companies and industrial parks, showed that Beijing wants to nudge Kim to grapple with his feeble economy, said Zhang Liangui, an expert on North Korea at the Central Party School in Beijing.China's plans to revitalise its Northeast, where modern ports serve rustbelt relics of state-owned factories, would get a boost if the North Korean economy were to open to more trade and investment. Chinese firms are already informally active in mining in impoverished North Korea.North Korea is keen to learn from China's success but any changes would be "gradual", said a source with close ties to the Chinese leadership, who declined to be named because the visit is politically sensitive.A mismanaged currency re-denomination last year paralysed much of North Korea's nascent private business and sent shivers of unrest through the brittle economy.(Additional reporting by Alfred Jin in Beijing, Writing by Lucy Hornby)

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