Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

South Korea and China have agreed to cooperate to prevent a possible nuclear test by North Korea amid increasing reports citing suspicious activity in the communist nation, Seoul's presidential security adviser said Friday.

China, the communist North's closest ally and key provider of oil, has agreed with South Korea to cooperate to prevent a possible North Korean nuclear test.

NORTH Korea can have a future or it can have nuclear weapons but "it cannot have both", the US said, as staunch ally China warned "no one is going to protect" the regime should it go ahead with atomic tests.

Beijing's ominous caution breaks a longstanding policy of avoiding criticism of Pyongyang, and leaves the Stalinist state without the support of its sole powerful friend.

For the avid river swimmers of this Chinese border city, North Korea is 10 minutes' brisk freestyle away and yet a world apart.

Each day in the warmer months in Dandong, hundreds of Chinese swimmers plunge into the narrow Yalu river dividing their country from the North and dozens kick 500 meters to the opposite side for a rest and a glimpse of the poor, withdrawn communist state.

The Chinese are openly debating "regime change" in Pyongyang after last week's nuclear test by their confrontational neighbour.

Will China take over North Korea? As the world rumored whether North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has died away in a stroke or close to death, that is the question from Gordon Chang, author of the Coming Collapse of China.

While the rest of the world looks to Beijing to stop North Korea from exploding a nuclear bomb, a leading Chinese analyst says it is too late - China cannot act without doing worse harm to its own interests.

Why is China putting up with behaviour that threatens to provoke its arch-rival, Japan, into acquiring nuclear weapons, and keeps a roadblock in the path of integrating East Asia's industrial economies and the Russian far east's resources into one great powerhouse?

With India and the US having reached agreement on the 123 nuclear treaty, India’s negotiations to permit it to use nuclear energy will now shift to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in order to ratify the right for India to enter the civilian nuclear market.