WASHINGTON -- North Korea is a Potemkin country. When I visited, it had an airport without airplanes, roads without cars and streets without street signs.

But even a Potemkin country can develop nuclear weapons. So the Bush administration, focused on Iraq and lacking a simple means to deter Pyongyang from an atomic path, is hoping China will pressure the North. But Beijing will act only if the United States demonstrates that doing so advances Chinese interests.

A half century ago, the newly established People's Republic of China saved the Democratic People's Republic of Korea from defeat in the Korean War. Last year China accounted for about 70 percent of North Korea's oil supplies.