Said Chinese officials themselves.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/KOR-01-070813.html
Wikileaks cables reveal China 'ready to abandon North Korea' | World news | The Guardian
Why China is afraid of North Korea - The Week
The reason China help DPRK is for its own stragedical purpose, but this partnership is becoming more and more counter productive. The partnership between PRC and ROK is based on pragmatism, and the relationship is depended on mutural benefits. So as a pragmatic leaders as what PRC has right now, who would you choose as your friend.
The Guardian article you quote, well, first of all it's the Guardian, take it with a grain of salt. Secondly, any intelligent statesman can/should use Wikileaks as a tool to misinform and disinform. Here is the article you posted:
"WikiLeaks: Better not believe it
How far might the new Sino-South Korean rapport go? Maybe all the way. On November 29, 2010 the top front page story in the Guardian, a leading British daily paper, bore the striking headline: "Wikileaks cables reveal China 'ready to abandon North Korea'" The sub-heading expanded and explained: "Leaked dispatches show Beijing is frustrated with military actions of 'spoiled child' and increasingly favors reunified Korea."
Really? No, not really. On closer inspection this was just gossip. A particular official known to be an outspoken hardliner - Chun Yung-woo, senior foreign policy secretary to the then ROK president, Lee Myung-bak - w
as telling the US ambassador in Seoul, over breakfast, some grumbles about the DPRK he'd heard from low-level Chinese officials on the sidelines of the six-party talks - in 2008, two years earlier! So this was no bombshell, but tittle-tattle.
It was also very misleading, since in fact China's line was the exact opposite. In May 2010, when South Korea accused the North of torpedoing one of its warships in March (46 young sailors drowned), Beijing angered Seoul by refusing to condemn Pyonyang - which denied responsibility. More broadly: From about 2008, when Kim Jong-il's health first became a concern, all signs indicate that China took a strategic decision to grit its teeth and prop up the Kim regime, no matter what. Trade (see above) and visits both rose markedly.
Why would China choose so? Old friendship - "like lips and teeth", it used to be said - was the least of it. Old-timers who valued wartime comradeship no longer held power in China. Their pragmatic successors were impatient with the DPRK as an ungrateful loose cannon.
So why support it? For very cogent reasons. Seen from Beijing, if there is one thing worse than North Korea, then it is no North Korea. Both the process and outcome of any regime collapse in the DPRK look like nightmares for the PRC. Thousands of refugees would flee across the long (1,416 kilometer) and porous river border into China. There might be fighting, and China could get drawn in.
The nightmare scenario would be if China intervened, but so did the US and South Korea. A superpower clash in Korea, again? One Korean War was bad enough. (Chinese casualties were huge: 145,000 deaths, 25,000 missing, 260,000 wounded.) As for the outcome: If Korea reunifies like Germany and the DPRK vanishes, then the ROK, a staunch US ally which hosts 28,000 US troops, would share a border with China. Not good.
Yet this calculus is not set in stone. What if North Korea refuses to change, but continues to tax China's and everyone's patience with nuclear defiance and provocations? Or on the other side of the coin, a smart China should also cultivate South Korea and try to lure it away from quite so tight an embrace of the US. Many in Seoul fret that the ROK is punching below its weight on the global stage, and yearn for the foreign policy autonomy of a Turkey or a Brazil.
Eventually, if North Korea is stupid enough to remain obdurately recidivist, China may have to choose. Thinking strategically and long-term, which of the Koreas does it make economic and political sense for China to have as its ally or at least a good friend? If the question is put like that, the answer is obvious. So Kim Jong-eun had better not push China too far.
If Beijing ever decides it has had enough and cuts the cord, that would be the end of the DPRK. But if Kim sees the light and opts for peace and reform, there could still be two Koreas for a while to come. Northeast Asia's future, and his country's and his own, all hinge on how he decides. That visit to Mao Anying's grave suggests that Kim knows which side his bread is buttered.
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University in the UK, and a freelance consultant, writer and broadcaster on Korean affairs. A regular visitor to the peninsula, he has followed North Korean affairs for 45 years.
A Chinese translation of an earlier version of part of this article was commissioned by and first appeared in SingTao Daily (Hong Kong), issue of 27-28 July 2013. Used by kind permission."
The article is wishy washy, back and fourth, maybe, a little bit, but not really, blah , blah...at best the answer is "no", China is not abandoning NK.
NK is a buffer zone for China. China will support NK over SK, if not, it will be a bad chess move on China's part, and maybe a costly one. 30,000 US troops across China's border may not seem alot, but combine those with advanced military hardware, missiles, etc and you have a different ball game.
Some Chinese members tend to underestimate the US' military strength, but luckily CPC members are smarter than that.
As long as SK is still a bitch of the US and their people continues to believe in Christianity, China should not abandon NK. Virtually every foreign policies SK have implemented have countered China. Recently, they claim China's ADIZ overlaps their ADIZ, and will not call for planes to release their flight details to China. Not to mention there are a growing number of extreme right-wing S Koreans claiming revisionist history against China.
Until SK is positively pro-China, we will not support the south kimchis.