News Analysis

BEIJING -- There was confusion at the China-North Korea border Thursday after Chinese tour operators halted trips into the North.

Wang Zhao / AFP - Getty Images

Two men wait Thursday for dispatch at a customs port in the Chinese border city of Dandong. The largest border crossing between North Korea and China has been closed to tourist groups, a Chinese official said Wednesday.

It wasn't clear whether the instruction to do so came from the Chinese authorities, the North Koreans, or was made by the nervous operators themselves.

But it mirrored a wider confusion over Chinese policy toward Pyongyang, which depends on Beijing for food and fuel, as well as diplomatic support.

As North Korea readies what is thought to be a missile test, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei has spent most of the week deflecting questions with the official line that "all sides" should show restraint and begin dialogue, and that peace and stability are a "shared responsibility."

But in an interview with NBC News he was more forthright about China's growing concern. "We do not want to see chaos and conflict on China's doorstep," he said.

In fact, there are signs that China is rethinking its policy toward the North. President Xi Jinping last weekend told a forum of political and business leaders that no country "should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain." He didn't mention the North by name, but it was pretty clear who he was referring to.

Earlier, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi had told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that Beijing would not allow "troublemaking on China's doorstep," a line repeated in an editorial in Thursday's China Daily.

China also supported the latest UN sanctions that followed North Korea's third nuclear test.

In fact, relations between the two have been souring for some time as Pyongyang has consistently ignored calls by Beijing for restraint.

"To many in Beijing, North Korea is looking less like a strategic asset and more like a strategic burden," said Cheng Xiaohe, associate professor at Renmin University's School of International Studies.

In the past, even when clearly unhappy, Beijing has treated the North with kid gloves because of fear of the North collapsing, and also as a hedge against U.S. power in Asia.

'Little Fatty'
According to leaked 2010 diplomat cables obtained by Wikileaks and posted by newspapers the Guardian and the New York Times, Chinese officials described the regime in the North as behaving like a "spoiled child."

Slideshow: North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un

The youngest son of Kim Jong Il succeeded his late father in 2011, becoming the third member of his family to rule the unpredictable and reclusive communist state.

Launch slideshow

Chinese social media, which is as close a barometer of public opinion as you can get here, has in recent days been buzzing with criticism -- not of the U.S., but of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, for leading his country to disaster and the world close to war.

Kim is derided as "Little Fatty" or "Fatty the Third."

One former top U.S. diplomat agrees there are clear signs that China is losing patience with North Korea. Kurt Campbell, the state department's top official for east asia, said there are signs that a relationship once described by Chairman Mao to be "as close as lips and teeth" is wearing thin.

He said this was notable in public statements and private conversations with U.S. officials. Speaking last week at a forum at Johns Hopkins University, he said this had the potential for a large impact on northeast Asia.

What's harder to say is how this growing frustration will be translated into concrete actions to pressure the North.

Cheng of Renmin University noted that in 2003 Beijing turned off the oil supply in order to force Pyongyang to join six-party talks and could use that weapon again.

"If China has political will, China can do something," he said. "China can make a difference."

Secretary of State John Kerry will be taking this up with China's leaders when he is there this weekend.

"China and the U.S. share common interests in peace, stability and denuclearisation," said the Foreign Ministry's Hong Lei. "We hope to work with the U.S. side towards that end."

Significantly, there has so far been no Chinese criticism of the display of U.S. high-tech firepower in the region, which is seen as another tacit condemnation of Pyongyang's antics.

That said, Kerry will no doubt point out, as other officials have done privately, that if China fails to act the result will be an even bigger U.S. military presence in the region and a possible regional arms race -- precisely what China has said it wants to avoid.

Related:

US on missile watch as North Korea celebrates

Full North Korea coverage from NBC News

Slideshow: Glimpses into the hermit kingdom of North Korea

David Guttenfelder / AP

As chief Asia photographer for the Associated Press, David Guttenfelder has had unprecedented access to communist North Korea. Here's a rare look at daily life in the secretive country.

Launch slideshow

Andy Wong / AP

A woman collects rubbish around the tombstone of her family grave at the Babaoshan cemetery during the Qingming Festival in Beijing on Thursday.

Traditional gifts include fake money and paper bags of clothing. But in recent years, as China has become more upscale, so has the giving – at least symbolically.

People now give paper representations of TV sets, washing machines, houses, luxury cars – and even mistresses. With the popularity of Apple products in China, they have gone to the top of the gift list.

Li Le / NBC News

Fake Apple products for sale in Beijing as offerings to ancestors for China's Tomb Sweeping Festival.

Jia Bo, 27, designs various cardboard imitations of high-end products and sells them online. He has everything that a Chinese person would dream to have in this life or the next: Lamborghinis, ocean view mansions, professional cameras and pets for companionship.

“Compared to luxury ‘cars,’” which can cost from $10-$150, imitation Apple products “are much more affordable,” said Jia.

This season’s hot seller is an entire set of “Apple” products. For only $7 you can send a Mac computer, iPhone and iPad to your relatives in heaven. For an extra 50 cents, you can upgrade to an iPhone 5.

Jia thinks these new gifts show changes in Chinese attitudes. “In the past, people only focused on basic needs. But now, particular young people, care more about the quality of life.”

“That’s why Pomeranian dogs are also very popular,” said Jia, though he noted that he believed the breed was originally Japanese.

New materialism
Bao Wenying, a customer at Jia’s online store, was pleased with her purchase, writing on the website: “They look very real. I think my grandparents will be thrilled after they receive these Apple products. Did I buy too much? I guess old [Steve] Jobs will take care of them.”

Carlos Barria / Reuters

Food offerings are seen at the tomb of a deceased person during Tomb Sweeping Day, at Songhe graveyard, on the outskirts of Shanghai on Thursday.

Wang Weibin, a resident from Jinhua, Zhejiang province, chose a “Mercedes-Benz” for his uncle. It was a chance to give him a new experience. “When he was alive, everyone was riding bicycles,” said Wang.

Not everyone likes the trend. Some grumble that these “luxury” goods merely reflect materialism in Chinese society.

“These are just commodities,” said Bao Xingdan, a 43-year-old housewife from Zhejiang. She prefers the traditional offering of burning fake money.

She pointed to the spiritualism of it. “This kind of paper can be used as money – only if people are chanting scriptures as they fold the paper into the shape of money.”

Bao added that for each piece of paper, people usually have to repeat a scripture at least three times.

Others think all these practices are just superstitions and that the best way to respect elders is to treat them well when they are alive.

AP

Residents burn incense and paper money to pay their respects to the dead as it rains on a smoke filled hillside cemetery in Jinjiang in southeast China's Fujian province on Thursday. Tomb-Sweeping Day is an annual festival where Chinese people honor the dead.

Meanwhile, in Beijing there’s been a crackdown on the imitation Apple products—ironically the same week that state newspapers were criticizing the company.

A spokesman at the Beijing City Police Station, who only gave his surname, Zhang, told NBC News that violators were engaged in “patent infringement.”

However NBC found that numerous stores were openly selling products with slightly altered logos and product names.

It seems that China’s desire to give Apple products to its ancestors is undeterred by the government’s media or police. On earth Beijing is causing Tim Cook headaches, but Steve Jobs surely has a lot of Chinese friends in heaven.

NBC’s Yanzhou Liu and Mingchao Zhang have contributed to the story.  

BEIJING – A massive sinkhole opened up Wednesday in the southern city of Shenzhen, wreaking havoc at a residential compound and killing one.

According to the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, the sinkhole opened up at a construction site in Shenzhen’s Futian district at around 5:20 p.m. (5:20 a.m. ET). CCTV video from a nearby residential compound shows the ground in front of a tower shaking before suddenly opening up into a chasm in two separate places.

The sinkhole, reportedly 16.5 feet in diameter and four-floors deep, swallowed up a 25-year-old security guard working in the tower. Rescue workers were able to reach the guard and take him to a nearby hospital, but he died soon after.

Shenzhen authorities are still unsure why the collapse happened. Residents interviewed by the Southern Metropolis reported recently feeling multiple tremors in the area around the construction site.

Despite assurances from an expert that unaffected areas of the residential compound were safe, residents there were reportedly reluctant to go back into their homes and instead found alternative places to stay for the night.

This is not the first time that China’s Guangdong province has dealt with mysterious sinkholes. In January, a massive manhole suddenly opened up at a construction site in the city of Guangzhou, bringing down six buildings around it. 

Related:

Click here for more Behind the Wall posts 

BEIJING – Wei Guohua finally found his Mrs. Right – almost 10 years after he died.

Led by a rooster, Wei Guohua's children brought the remains of his bride and buried them inside his tomb in Yulin, a town in Shannxi province, on Nov. 14, 2012.

A well-known local feng shui master hosted a ceremony to pronounce them husband and wife. (The rooster was there because people believe the birds can guide the dead to a new home.)

The marriage of two dead people in China is a centuries-old custom called "minghun," or "ghost marriage."

According to folklore, if people are alone when they die, they will be alone in the afterlife, too. Worse yet, lonely ghosts might come back and try to take family members back to their world to keep them company. So it becomes a family responsibility to make sure deceased relatives are happily married.

Plenty of challenges
Carrying out a ghost wedding in modern China isn't easy. For one thing, it's not legal. The practice was officially banned after the Communist Party came to power in 1949, but it can still be found in remote regions of the country.

Also, ghost weddings can cost big bucks. They are performed much like regular weddings, except they usually involve a burial ceremony. Relatives and friends of the deceased eat and drink. Sometimes entertainment is provided. After the wedding, the two families typically socialize together, especially on major holidays. Some believe their bond can be closer than that of in-laws of living couples.

As is customary with a regular marriage, the family of the groom must give the bride's family a betrothal gift. When the couple is dead, that gift almost always comes in the form of cash. In total, Wei's children spent around $2,500 on the betrothal gifts to the bride's family, but they considered the price reasonable. A typical betrothal gift for a ghost wedding is between $4,500 and $5,500.

Finally, it's not exactly easy to find an available corpse.

The dark side
Demand for female bodies is particularly high. Professor Chen Huawen, an expert in Chinese burial customs, says the reason is that many young bachelors work as coal miners in provinces where ghost marriages persist. Coal mining is dangerous work that often leads to death. According to Chen, miners' families often receive a lump sum of around $50,000 as compensation when a miner dies in an accident, and they are often willing to spend some of that money to find a wife for their dead relative.

As a result, the fresh corpse of a young woman can fetch as much as $30,000 on the black market. That kind of demand has led to the grim crime of grave robbing.

In early March, four people were sentenced to more than two years for stealing 10 corpses from graveyards in Shannxi province and selling them on the black market.

Zhou Peng, a journalist at the Xi'an Evening News who reported on the story, told NBC the criminals even performed plastic surgery on corpses and dyed their hair to make them look younger, so they could fetch higher prices.

10-year search
It took 10 years for Wei Guohua's children to find a wife for him. The Weis began looking for a bride the day their father died in 2003.

Born in 1920, Wei was single after his first wife divorced him in 1960. A poor man with four young children, his prospects for a wife were slim. The children saw the difficulties their father endured to raise them and wanted to see him happy in the afterlife. They also believed a happy father could watch over the family.

The bride, Yue Caixia, had waited even longer. Yue was born in 1968 and died in 1989 when she was only 21. Her brother and sister were very careful about arranging the first marriage for their sister. According to the Wei family, Yue's last arrangement broke up because of disagreement over the betrothal gift.

But Yue's family could not wait any longer. The family planned to move away from where she was buried, and they dreaded leaving her alone. When the Weis' proposal came, they accepted it.

Yue had been too long in the ground for her family to fuss over a bridal coiffure or makeup. Instead, her family folded miniature versions of the series of dresses a Chinese bride traditionally wears into a new smaller coffin. They donned gloves to transfer her bones gingerly into her new home. They worked beneath a canopy to keep her remains from the daytime sky, which is considered harmful to the souls of the dead.

Even though the event is somewhat celebratory, since the practice is banned, the families did not take any photos. 

And it took a long time coming, but Wei's family was happy with the arrangement.

"Ghost marriage between two dead people is stable and lasts forever," said Zhao Ming, one of Wei Guohua's grandsons. "There is no such thing as divorce."

NBC News' Huang Pei contributed to this report.

Related: 

Read more from NBC's reports on China in Behind the Wall 

China river's dead pig toll passes 13,000 but officials say water quality is 'normal'

Coca-Cola not 'illegally mapping' China after all, officials say

China Daily via Reuters

China's newly-elected Premier Li Keqiang (left) shakes hands with former Premier Wen Jiabao as China's President Xi Jinping, seated right, and other delegates applaud Friday. Li was once friends with democracy activists, but a dissident accused him of covering up an HIV scandal.

BEIJING -- China's legislature formally chose Li Keqiang as premier on Friday, installing an English-speaking bureaucrat as the man in charge of the world's second-largest economy.

The largely rubber-stamp National People's Congress chose Li, 57, to replace Wen Jiabao.

Nearly 3,000 delegates gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People to vote on Li's appointment, putting the final stamp of approval on a generational transition of power.

Li drew only three no votes and six abstentions from the carefully selected parliament.

He rose and shook hands with Xi Jinping, who was elected president by the legislature on Thursday, as legislators applauded.

While Xi is the country's top leader, Li heads China's State Council and is charged with executing government policy and overseeing the economy.

A reformer?
As premier, Li is faced with one of the world's widest gaps between rich and poor.

"I believe that in this class (of new leaders), his intent to reform is quite strong," said Chen Ziming, an independent political commentator in Beijing. "He has a close relationship with reform-minded economists."

More than any other Chinese party leader until now, Li was immersed in the intellectual and political ferment of the decade of reform under Deng Xiaoping, which ended in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that were crushed by troops.

As a student at Peking University, Li befriended ardent pro-democracy advocates, some of whom later became outright challengers to party control.

His friends included activists who went into exile after the June 1989 crackdown.

"He has a better understanding of how Westerners think," a source familiar with China's foreign policy told Reuters.

Li, who has a degree in law and a doctorate in economics, will take the reins of an economy whose growth slowed in 2012 to a 13-year low, albeit at a 7.8 percent rate that is the envy of other major economies.

Both Xi and Li will need to deliver a blueprint to stabilize the real estate market. They need to do this quickly to calm a market in which real estate prices have soared 10-fold in major cities during the last decade.

Dissident beaten up
Across China, people are resentful of the widening income inequality gap.

China has 2.7 million U.S. dollar millionaires and 251 billionaires, according to the Hurun Report.

However, 13 percent of its people live on less than $1.25 per day, according to United Nations data. The average annual urban disposable income is just $3,500.

During his time in central Henan province from 1998 to 2004, Li was criticized by activists for helping to cover up the extent of an HIV/AIDS crisis there, when hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers became infected through botched blood-selling schemes.

Leading dissidents, Hu Jia told Reuters he was detained in Henan, while Li was governor, for four days in 2002, when Hu was advocating for rural victims of AIDS.

"When the AIDS epidemic exploded, everything that Li Keqiang did was with the aim of covering it up," Hu said. "He didn't allow the ordinary people to go to Beijing to petition, meet the media, and didn't allow Aizhixing, the institute I was working at, [to] enter Henan to examine and report on the reality of the AIDS situation."

Hu said two state security officers beat and kicked him on Thursday till his head bled. He was summoned by police on a charge of "provoking quarrels and making trouble." The Dongcang police station, where Hu was held, could not be reached for comment. 

Related:

Sign here, Mr. President: China's Xi completes rise to the top

China seeks to pacify middle class; boosts defense spending

Full China coverage from our Behind the Wall blog

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 15, 2013 7:19 AM EDT

nandu.com

Law enforcement officers tackle fruit seller Li Shengyan in Guangzhou, China, in an incident that turned into a public relations nightmare for the authorities.

Cops in China charged with fighting petty crime have become so notorious for their abuse of power that their official name, Chengguan, has become slang for thuggishness. “Don’t be too chengguan,” one might admonish another, meaning “don’t be such a bully.”

That reputation was given more fuel Wednesday when a newspaper ran pictures of an officer tackling a diminutive fruit vendor in the southern boomtown of Guangzhou as her 16-month-old daughter looked on. During the incident, he grabbed Li Shengyan's neck and wrestled her to the ground after a dispute over a fruit knife.

Once such incidents would have provoked little comment and the authorities did not need to fear the court of public opinion.

nandu.com

After Li Shengyan was arrested, her 16-month-old daughter gave her a hug.

But the popularity of social media websites has changed all that. Users of China’s two most popular Twitter-like services had commented on the pictures some 7 million times by Friday, many expressing their disgust at the police.

There are now signs that those in power are being forced to take people power seriously, even if the eventual outcome is much the same.

One expert on Chinese social media said that while officials’ first instincts were “to cover up and distract attention” from controversial events, they now faced losing their jobs if they handled them badly.

Wednesday’s incident – as described by the report in the Southern Metropolitan newspaper -- started after officials confiscated her fruit knife. One officer, Ao Dating, then threatend to take away her fruit and the cart.

Pomegranate thrown
Li then yelled at Ao and hurled a pomegranate at him. This enraged Ao and he grabbed her by the neck.  The officer then forced her to the ground. His colleagues eventually dragged him off Li.

One picture showed Li with her hands tied -- unable to comfort her daughter as the young girl hugged her.

After the confrontation, Li was arrested and taken to a police station along with her daughter. Her cart was confiscated.

By Thursday, the story had become an internet sensation. 

“Brute!” one blogger posted.

“Can’t you be a little more civilized? Do you know how much it will traumatize the girl,” another said.

The traditional response given by officials to international press enquiries about events like this is: “I do not know.” 

However, this time, a spokeswoman for Guangzhou’s City Urban Administrative and Law Enforcement Bureau was surprisingly forthcoming.

“Our bosses are investigating the incident and will inform the public once we find out,” she said. “We are waiting for the results too.”

Jeremy Goldkorn, an expert on Chinese media and Internet culture, said local governments were increasingly held to account by higher authorities for issues raised on the blogosphere.

“If they do not react, these lower level officials like city urban management police could lose their jobs,” he said.

“The first reaction of these types of officials is just to try to cover up and distract attention from the case. Because of the speed and growth of the social media, it becomes more and more difficult for that kind of distraction happen,” he added.

Investigation blames Li
After its investigation, the law enforcement bureau said officers had been suspended and there was a report Li had been given an apology as she was released from custody.

However, the investigation blamed it on Li, accusing her of attacking officials, injuring one. A picture of Li throwing the pomegranate was also released.

The original report in the Southern Metropolitan was taken down and other websites commenting on the incident also disappeared.

Li's cart was returned, but she was left unhappy.

“They (the officials) said ‘The girl, and her parents were well taken care of by the police,” she posted on a Tencent Weibo account which was registered to her. “It was just a show. My girl’s diaper was not changed in 24 hours … the police should face what they have done instead of writing a nice article to make themselves look good."

Huang Pei, of NBC News, contributed to this report.

Related:

Chinese ex-police detained while trying to stamp out corruption

Communist Party honcho's airport rage caught on camera

Chinese official booted after account of lurid affair emerges