Is A Collapsing North Korea Really a Problem for China?

I know that if North Korea collapses China worries North Koreans will flee across its border. However if I were running a dictatorship like China I would do one of three things…
1. Landmine the border so densely no one in their right mind would attempt to cross it.
2. Build concentrations camps and ask the U.N to provide the food.
3. Just shoot the North Korans after firing warning shots. (Cheapest but worst option given various international criticisms).
4. Surely North Koreans have the potential to be even more cost effective than Chinese country labour; they are certainly better educated, and possibly more cooperative and smarter all round?

If China thinks it will loose out economically then surely they know this is only temporary; as in time and theory North Korea has even greater potential to become wealthy as South Korea. It’s just stupid communism, its oppression, and mass executions which holds them back.

But perhaps (anyway) we the west should guarantee China has nothing to loose if it cuts trade with North Korea completely?

Is Big China Scared of Little North Korea?
I wouldn’t be. Unlike us they don’t have to worry about how many civilians-troops they loose (there population is still naturally too big anyway); neither do they have to worry much about what the public thinks. And given the propaganda the public will probably think well of such a war (just like any other war).

But the biggest reason why if I were China I wouldn’t be worried about a war with North Korea is because I would demand reparations. You see war is not only good for the economy but paradoxically it is also very expensive; and as (I poor little China) hadn’t really wanted a war with North Korea I would be pissed.
Unlike the pre Hitler reparations I wouldn’t demand a ridiculous amount of money. Instead I would just claim a ridiculous amount of prime East Asian real estate as my own. This wouldn’t be a problem as the U.N would be bound to legitimise it; if the whole deal meant the United States could stay out of the war, and especially providing a little amount of North Korea went back to South Korea, or became a separate democratic state (although that too might just be a Chinese puppet government).

Anyway the good news is that we could stay out of the war, China would get bigger, and the whole world would have somewhere good to invest money for a decade or more. Win, win, win (oh and a crazy dictatorship is no longer threatening to cause some nuclear war straight out of a cold war time warp).

Alternatively: The Future IS Scary…

If North Korea persists in existence; not only do the worlds investors loose out on this great investment opportunity trapped inside communism; but North Korea will continue to threaten the world in exchange for money.
Sooner or later Kim Jim will ring up the white house and say “Hi I got a nuclear bomb in the Middle East and I was wondering how much you’ll buy it”. The worst thing is that NK will just build up more and more nuclear bombs making a war (that in all long term probability is quite inevitable) so much more worse.
Of course we could try to blockade the country; but I'm convinced (that unlike any other country in the world) the North Korean regime will not collapse. This is partly because most of the right people to cause a rebellion have been erased though what amounts to class-character genocide carried out over 50 years. Aside from the secret police, childhood monitoring, the unique North Korean Political Class System which determines food rations is also quite something…
www.brookings.edu... Best Link
hrw.org...
hrw.org...

In fact the only purpose of a blockade (without China’s help) is to prevent something like missiles getting out.

But surely China has more to gain from removing North Korea than it does tolerating them; in fact some would say a great deal to loose by tolerating them. And say North Korea collapsed itself; how would China feel about a situation with generals armed with nuclear weapons being the warlords of different provinces?
Personally I think it would be a crazy nightmarish situation which would be well earned (given their crazy nightmarish treatment of fleeing North Koreans) and current outdated policy to North Korea in general (Chinese current policy certainly made sense in the days of the Soviet Union).

So ATS why is China make the sacrifice of being nice? Do you agree with me its one that costs them more it deliverers them? (Especially in the long term)

Maybe China is actually using North Korea in it's grand game of chess. If North Korea does some horrendous deed, the fault lies solely with Kim Jong-il. China will be standing on the sidelines like it always is. North Korea's current position works out quite well for China, I think.