WikiLeaks: China thinks North Korea behaves as a "spoiled child"
China officials have repeatedly expressed grave concerns about their communist alley North Korea, it is revealed in the latest WikiLeaks cables.
Pyongyang was behaving like a "spoiled child", a Chinese foreign ministry official is quoted as having said in 2009.
Chinese officials reportedly told their South Korean counterparts that Beijing placed little value on the North as a buffer state.
And they even suggested that the peninsula should be reunified under Seoul's control.
The revelations come as regional tensions remain high after the North shelled a South Korean island a week ago.
Another leaked cable reveals that China's Vice Foreign Minister, He Yafei, downplayed Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's trip to Pyongyang, telling the US Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg: "We may not like them... [but] they are a neighbour."
Another cable relays a discussion over an official lunch in February 2010 between former South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Chun Yung-woo and the US ambassador to Seoul, Kathleen Stephens.
The minister is said to have revealed that a new, younger generation of Chinese leaders no longer regarded North Korea as a useful or reliable ally, and would not risk renewed armed conflict on the peninsula.
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- groups:
- Community, News and Politics, World Politics
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- tags:
- China, Wikileaks, North Korea, South Korea
