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No.155 オリジナル英文

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China's Influence Over North Korea in Question
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The United Nations says China was the world's third-largest food donor in 2005.

China gave 577,000 metric tons to the U.N.'s World Food Program last year - and 92 percent of that, 531,000 tons, was earmarked for the impoverished and isolated North Korea.

In fact, analysts have estimated that China supplies a third of North Korea's total food donations, and as much as 70 to 90 percent of its fuel aid.

It is also North Korea's number-one trading partner.

The South Korean government, which studies its northern neighbor carefully, says Sino-North Korean trade rose 14 percent in 2005, to a record of more than $1.5 billion.

So China's importance to North Korea would seem to give Beijing no small amount of the influence over decision-making in Pyongyang.

But analysts, such as Professor Andrei Lankov of the Australian National University, say that China's sway is limited.

Beijing has joined other nations in warning North Korea against the missile tests.

Shortly after the North's launches, the Chinese then sent a high-level delegation to Pyongyang to ask North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nuclear weapons programs, which China has hosted since 2003.

In both cases, Pyongyang rebuffed the requests of its ally and benefactor.

That led Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the top U.S. negotiator at the six-party talks, to question whether China has the ability to influence North Korea after all.

China has a vested interest in preserving leader Kim Jong Il's North Korea.

The Chinese fear that a regime collapse in the North could send huge numbers of refugees flooding across the border into Northeastern China.

Ralph Cossa, of the Center for Strategic and International Security in Hawaii, says Beijing recognizes its future is more closely tied to South Korea - which, like China, is a growing economic power.

Professor Ken Boutin of Australia's Deakin University predicts China's strong relations with South Korea, will eventually override its obligations to Pyongyang.

Experts seem to agree that China will continue to be North Korea's most important foreign partner as it keeps trying to promote stability in the region.

But with waning influence with the North and China's global economic interests at stake, experts suggest Beijing is bound to shift its focus away from its isolated communist neighbor.

The two nations are no longer, as they once boasted, "as close as lips and teeth."

Barry Newhouse, VOA News, Beijing.
by danueno | 2006-08-02 17:09 | オリジナル英文


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