A Chinese expert says North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s surprise visit to China will have positive effects of easing tensions in Northeast Asia.

A researcher at the Asia-Pacific Society of China told an interview with the Global Times on Friday that if Kim actually visited China, he would certainly discuss during his trip bilateral relations with China, the six-party nuclear talks, relations between the North and the U.S. and the situation in Northeast Asia.

The researcher, a former special correspondent of the Chinese newspaper People’s Daily to South Korea, claimed that Kim’s China visit shows that Beijing is the only country that the North can count on at critical moments and that maintaining relations with the North is in the interests of China as well.

Another researcher at an academy of social sciences in Liaoning Province said that there is little possibility that Beijing will intervene in the North’s choice successor as it is the North’s internal affairs. However, he added the two nations traditionally have notified each other of their decisions on critical economic or political issues.