North Korean issues have featured in many of the headlines surrounding the leaking of alleged US diplomatic cables by a whistle-blowing organisation, WikiLeaks. Some media outlets have suggested that the documents provide evidence of a growing rift between Chinese officials and North Korea, but even if the information is genuine there appeared to be little evidence of such a split. Although it is certainly possible that there are many in China who are fed up with North Korea's behaviour, Chinese policy over the past year appears to have been going in the opposite direction, strengthening both political and economic support for the North.

The one field in which Chinese support for the North seems to have been eroded is that of the North's uranium enrichment. In January 2011, during a state visit by China's president, Hu Jintao, to the US, the Chinese agreed to a joint statement that expressed concern over this programme-the first time that such a concession has been made to the US. The statement also emphasised the importance of dialogue between the two Koreas. It is not clear whether the concern that China expressed is entirely genuine; it appears to view the US stance on nuclear proliferation as hypocritical, especially given US acquiescence to India's nuclear weapons programme.

The extent of North Korea's programme was highlighted in November 2010 when a leading US physicist, Siegfried Hecker, was shown an ultra-modern plant for enriching uranium, with up to 2,000 centrifuges operating at Yongbyon, the North's main nuclear site. This hitherto unsuspected facility is new, supposedly built to world-class standards in barely 18 months since International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors were expelled from the site in April 2009. Such a pace of construction is implausible, and the suspicion is therefore that North Korea therefore moved some of the resources from another undisclosed site or sites. The North claimed that the plant was making fuel for a new civilian light-water reactor under construction, which was shown earlier to a separate US delegation.