For too long, Beijing has coddled, excused, shielded, subsidized, and appeased the indefensible — Kim Jong-Il’s nightmarish regime in North Korea.

China is the key to solving the Korean quandary. The Middle Kingdom is North Korea’s largest trade partner, most generous aid donor, and only real friend. Without help from China, North Korea is not viable — if such an impoverished and benighted nation can be said to be so. In what should be an embarrassment to modern business and political leaders in Beijing, relations between China and North Korea are still conducted by their recondite and fossilized Communist Parties.

Labour protests that have forced shutdowns at overseas-owned factories in China have spread beyond the southern industrial heartland, posing a dangerous challenge for Beijing.

Workers at a Taiwanese factory outside Shanghai clashed with police on Tuesday, leaving about 50 protesters injured. The confrontation represents an escalation of recent industrial action, which until this week had been largely peaceful and concentrated in southern Guangdong province.

Ferrari will give the 599 GTO its public debut at this month’s Beijing Motor Show, but has released pics and details of what is the company’s fastest ever road car. Limited to only 599 examples, Maranello describes this as the road going version of the extreme 599XX track car.

An international journalists association in Beijing said Friday that its Web site was the target of cyberattacks, the latest in a string of incidents that have affected foreign journalists in China.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China said in a statement that it disabled its Web site temporarily to deal with the problem after it experienced persistent attacks over two days involving a flood of traffic that overwhelmed its servers. Such attacks, while making a site inaccessible to regular visitors, are different from those that seek to gain unauthorized access to a Web site’s administration.

This week Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao announced his country would run a trade deficit of more than $8 billion this month. And he could not have been more pleased. “To be honest, I was happy when I learned of the situation,” he said.

The Chinese take great pride in their nation being a trade powerhouse, running up gargantuan surpluses year in and year out. So why is Mr. Wen glad that, during his watch, China will go into the red? The deficit will be the first monthly one since April 2004.