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China has expressed frustration with North Korea, with one official calling it a "spoiled child," at the same time as brushing off U.S. requests to choke off the flow of military technology from Pyongyang to Tehran that helps to sustain the regime, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables.

One of the latest batches of cables released by WikiLeaks also quotes a South Korean official speculating that China might be able to accept reunification under South Korea's leadership.

Another cable quotes a Chinese official telling a U.S. Embassy official after North Korea's missile test last year that: "North Korea wanted to engage directly with the United States and was therefore 'acting like a spoiled child' to get the attention of the "adult." The Guardian, one of five news organization that got early access to the cables, names the Chinese official as Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei.

It has been widely reported that 2010 is the year that China passed Japan to become the second largest “country” economy in the world.

Less reported, however, is a more important fact: 2010 or thereabouts will go down in history as the year that China became a more important player in world economic growth than the United States.

The U.S. is expected to grow GDP by about 2% in 2011, while China’s GDP growth is projected at 9%. 2009 U.S. GDP, according to the IMF, was $14 trillion and China GDP was $4.8 trillion. Therefore, China will add about $200 billion more than the U.S. to overall global GDP next year.

Air quality in Shanghai has plummeted since the World Expo left town, sliding from “excellent” to “polluted” and now—with levels of airborne particulates up to three times beyond what the government considers safe—downright frightening.

But even as the smog thickens, the question remains whether Shanghai can match a new standard of Sino-smokiness recently set by Beijing—a standard that (as one U.S. authority recently suggested) stretches the bounds of sanity.

According to a report in today’s China Daily, Shanghai’s air pollution index has broken 100 on eight days so far this month, at one point reaching 370—the worst reading in 10 years.

China on Sunday proposed emergency discussions among delegates to the six-party talks to discuss "complicated factors" on the Korean peninsula, as the U.S. and South Korea started a naval drill that has prompted dire warnings of reprisals from North Korea.

The move comes as Beijing engages in high-level diplomacy to try to cool tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul. China's special representative for Korean-peninsula affairs, Wu Dawei, proposed consultations in early December between the heads of the delegations to the stalled nuclear talks, which involve China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, the U.S. and Russia.

"Although this does not mean the resumption of the six-party talks, we hope it can help create the conditions for the resumption of the six-party talks," Mr. Wu told a press briefing.