North Korea's secretive leader Kim Jong-il toured east China on Monday, continuing a visit that suggests he is taking a fresh interest in the success of reforms in Asia's biggest economy and his isolated country's only major benefactor.China's leaders have repeatedly prodded Kim to open up North Korea's impoverished and state-dominated economy, something analysts say he has been reluctant to do for fear it could undermine his family dynasty's hold on power.
Premier Wen Jiabao told South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Tokyo that Kim was travelling through China to study "economic development", Yonhap News quoted a presidential aide as saying. Wen said Kim's trip would "offer the opportunity to understand China's development and utilise it for North Korea's development", according to Yonhap.
Cai Jian, a professor of Korean studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said that though Chinese leaders hope Kim will learn from and emulate China's economic reforms, the chances of him copying China's model were scant. "It's not that they're unwilling to learn, but they do face many difficulties. He would worry that if he carried out Chinese-style reform and opening up, then his regime and rule would be shaken - that would be his foremost worry," Cai said.
Kim's latest journey began on Friday and has so far taken him through the China's north-east to Yangzhou, a small, scenic city in the eastern province of Jiangsu, where his father, Kim Il-sung, met the then-president of China, Jiang Zemin, in 1991. Jiangsu province has prospered thanks to an export-led industrial boom created by the landmark economic reforms China began some three decades ago.
The English-language edition of the Global Times, a Beijing newspaper, cited unnamed sources as saying Kim was received at the local train station by Yangzhou officials when he arrived on Sunday. His visit was "an apparent move to seek economic co-operation between Beijing and Pyongyang", the report said.
Security outside the state guest house in Yangzhou, where Kim and his entourage could be staying, was tight, with police cars sitting in front its main entrance. The Japanese television station NTV reported that Kim visited a solar energy company and a supermarket in Yangzhou, where he was particularly taken with the durian fruit on sale.