* China frustrated with Pyongyang
* China has limited influence in NKorea
* China seeks Asian security for economic growth
By Rob Taylor
BRISBANE, Australia, Dec 8 (Reuters) - China is growing increasingly frustrated with North Korea and calls by the West for it to curb Pyongyang overestimate Beijing's influence in the reclusive state, said Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd.
The Sinophile former prime minister, who has close relations with China's heir designate Xi Jinping, said Beijing's new generation of leaders is working hard towards regional peace and stability to ensure China's continued economic rise.
"For the Chinese this is tough, when the North Koreans engage in provocative, destabilising behaviour, as they do unfortunately with increasing regularity," Rudd told Reuters in an interview.
"I know privately the Chinese spend a lot of work, a lot of time, on the regime in Pyongyang, whatever their public diplomacy might be from time to time," he said.
"My sense of it is that Chinese leaders are becoming increasingly frustrated by what's going on in North Korea."
China lashed out on Tuesday at international criticism of its refusal to rein-in North Korea, saying dialogue by the United States and its allies in Asia was the only way to resolve tension on the divided Korean peninsula.
The United States, South Korea and Japan have been muted in support of Chinese calls for emergency talks between North Korea and regional powers, concerned that could be seen as rewarding North Korea for a deadly attack two weeks ago on a South Korean island.
Rudd, who speaks fluent Mandarin, said foreign observers often overestimated China's influence on North Korea's regime and did not appreciate that North Korea had "particular political and ideological resonance" in China since the 1950s because of heavy losses during the Korean war.
"I think it's fair to say that assumptions, often in the West, that the North Koreans will do anything that the Chinese tell them to do are not right," said Rudd.
"The North Koreans, and I've been there a few times, are decisively independent, but of all states China has the greatest ability to bring influence."
Rudd, who was ousted as Australia's prime minister in June amid falling poll support ahead of national elections, is a student of China's rise and has been a critic of human rights abuses by the Chinese government.
His Brisbane electorate office has a framed white t-shirt on the wall with a picture on it of dissident Wei Jingsheng, given to Rudd by the Federation for a Democratic China.
Rudd was left red-faced last week by the leaking of a 2009 U.S. cable which said he advised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the United States may have to "deploy force" against China if it did not join the international community.
But Rudd said on Wednesday he was actually advocating a third path of diplomacy with Beijing.
"There are two schools of thought basically on China in the West. One is conflict, and the other is kowtow. I argue a third way, which is to engage with China on the 85 percent of things we have in common, and through diplomacy deal with the 15 percent of things that we don't have in common," he said.
China, as the world's largest trading nation, had a deep-seated concern that its growing economic and military power did not lead to serious conflict with neighbours and the United States, said Rudd.
"China's overriding interest is in maintaining stability and peace, because what they say is what they mean: they need stability and peace to provide for the continued economic development of their country," he said. "The task of development in China has a long, long way to go."
(Additional reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
