Hua Chunying, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, called the report “unreasonable criticism…We believe that politicizing human rights issues is not conducive toward improving a country’s human rights. We believe that taking human rights issues to the International Criminal Court is not helpful to improving a country’s human rights situation.”
One can postulate key reasons for this viewpoint:
1)A horrendous human rights record in North Korea acts as a buffer against China’s own distressing human rights record;
2)An attack on North Korea’s one party system underlines the identical situation in China;
3)North Korea’s absolute control over media, communications, and censorship [being broken by the mobile telephone revolution – see here http://to.pbs.org/1gJb7Ys] is echoed in China;
4)North Korea suppression of religious groups parallels China actions on Falun Gong – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong;
5)Nuclear North Korea is a huge military thorn for South Korea, Japan, andPhillipines. The North Korean pit bull is useful in disputes with these “neighbours” in the South China seas, etc. It also draws down US Military resources for use elsewhere;
6)The great Chinese economic fear is a united Korea . Already South Korea alone beats the Chinese in major industries where China wants to dominate- what would happen with 30M more fanatically productive North Koreans added to the South Korean economic juggernaut.
In sum, China has revealed its true colors on North Korea – Beijing wants a convenient suzerain in North Korea which historically it has long had for its own political and economic purposes. Like Russia in Syria – gross human rights violations be damned.