BEIJING (AFP) – North Korea's Kim Jong-Il stopped in China's Nanjing city Tuesday after touring an industrial zone and browsing at a store, reports said, on a trip believed aimed at studying the country's economic boom.

Kim's multi-city tour is his third China visit in just over a year and the repeated appearances are widely viewed as a bid by impoverished North Korea for more trade and economic help from Beijing, its sole major ally and benefactor.
“Where can I find salad oil?” Kim, wearing his trademark dark sunglasses, asked sales clerks in a shopping mall in the eastern city of Yangzhou on Monday, according to a report by Japan's Kyodo new service.
Kim, 69, “looked around at daily necessities, including rice and cooking oil,” South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted sales clerks as saying, adding that he bought nothing.
Kim, who arrived in China by train on Friday, reportedly spent two nights in Yangzhou but moved on Tuesday to nearby Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, in a roughly 40-car convoy with an armed police escort, Yonhap said.
His special train, which apparently transported him from North Korea down through northeastern and eastern China, also left for Nanjing from Yangzhou's railway station, the agency said, quoting unnamed sources.
While in Yangzhou, Kim had dined with former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, Yonhap said. Jiang was born in Yangzhou and held a meeting there with Kim's late father, North Korean founder Kim Il-Sung, in 1991.
Kim's Yangzhou tour included a visit to a manufacturer of solar power products, China's state-run Global Times said.
Details of Kim's visits are shrouded in secrecy with details officially divulged by both sides only after he has returned home. Yonhap has said the trip, which began Friday, was expected to last a week.
The agency added he may be planning a trip to the nearby Chinese financial hub Shanghai. Staff at the Nanjing guesthouse where he is reportedly staying declined comment to AFP.
North Korea's state-planned command economy remains crippled by severe shortages of power, raw materials, and persistent food shortages and his visit is believed intended to secure further trade and economic assistance.
During Kim's previous visit in August, Chinese President Hu Jintao urged him to undertake economic reforms.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Sunday in Tokyo that Kim was invited to help Pyongyang learn about China's economic development and revive its own economy.
Overseas aid for North Korea is waning because of anger at its nuclear and missile development. International sanctions have been imposed to try to curb those programs.
Six-nation talks aimed at dismantling the nuclear program in exchange for diplomatic and economic benefits have been stalled for more than two years.
Kim Yong-Hyun, a professor at Seoul's Dongguk University, cautioned against expecting any imminent changes in Pyongyang's economic policies.
“Through this visit, Beijing is urging North Korea to accept China-style economic openness and reform but the North, in reality, cannot shift to a market-oriented economy in the foreseeable future,” the professor said.
While North Korea may allow limited economic reform in specific areas such as the Rajin-Sonbong special economic zone near the border with China, “it has no intention to ease communist control over its people”, he added.
Yonhap said North Korea and China would break ground later this week on a joint project to turn Hwanggumpyong, an island in the Yalu River on their border, into an industrial complex, and quoted sources saying Kim may attend.
The North Korean leader also is believed to be keen to shore up Beijing's support for a plan to eventually transfer power to his son and designated successor, Kim Jong-Un.
The Global Times quoted a source close to the Yangzhou local government as saying the heir apparent was not part of the delegation visiting the city.