China has declined a suggestion from the U.S. to discuss a contingency plan in case North Korea collapses after leader Kim Jong-il dies, AP reported Sunday. Quoting diplomatic sources and Chinese scholars, AP said the U.S. asked China in several meetings with senior Chinese officials, including one Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg had during his visit there in June, to discuss a scenario in case the North Korean regime collapses. "Chinese officials rejected the overtures, although they pledged to work constructively with the U.S. on North Korea," it reported.
The U.S. contingency plan reportedly envisages securing North Korean nuclear weapons, solving the issue of North Korean refugees who would rush to the North Korea-China border, and preventing the U.S. and Chinese troops from clashing as they station themselves in North Korea.
But China has refused to discuss the plan, apparently because it does not believe post-Kim North Korea will collapse and worries such a plan would only upset the North.
A diplomat based in Beijing said that the U.S. wants to discuss this issue in consideration of China's influence on the North, but that China has a different view of the post-Kim North Korea and maintains the position that should the North collapse, it would be possible to solve it through the UN.
North Korea "will accuse us of being too colonialist for trying to arrange their future," Jin Canrong, an international affairs expert at Renmin University in Beijing, told AP. "In the minds of our leaders, there's still a lack of confidence and trust in the United States." 
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