North Korean guards reportedly shot and killed three Chinese citizens last week. China is the single largest benefactor of Pyongyang’s secretive dictatorship.

The three individuals were killed during what appears to have been an intrusion into North Korea during a smuggling operation, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said at a regular press briefing Tuesday, responding to a question about South Korean media reports on the incident.

The spokesman, Qin Gang, didn’t elaborate on the circumstances of the incident, and it wasn’t immediately clear if those killed were Chinese citizens. But Mr. Qin said that China “has attached great importance to” the incident, and “immediately made serious representations to the North Korean side.” He said China continues to investigate the incident.

Don’t assume this will really harm meaningful relations between Beijing and Pyongyang. Unless the citizens (actually subjects) were politically connected to the Communist Party, China isn’t likely to view their deaths as important enough to warrant strained relations with the Kim regime.

China’s interests in propping up the North Korean dictatorship extend beyond ideological ties. North Korea resides in a catch-22 scenario. The Kim regime is oppressive and has resulted in many millions of deaths thanks to its disastrous policies. And yet…were the regime to fall suddenly we’d be looking at the largest humanitarian crisis perhaps in history.

North Korea has a population of about 24 million, all of whom are ruled by Kim Jong-il and his political thugs. The people suffer and even die of a lack of resources. One shining example is during the 1990′s when a famine reportedly killed between 2.5 and 3 million people. That’s 3 million people dead.

But these people can’t actually rely on the international community for direct assistance, so the rest of us are (relatively) off the hook for now (we’re talking strictly in humanitarian terms). What happens if that oppressive stopper is removed tomorrow? Disaster.

The world would need to sustain 24 million people, many of whom, China believes, would quickly stream across the border and right into Chinese territory. You can’t ship 24 million people a bag of potato chips and 2-liter of Pepsi and call it a day. You need to feed them for the time being and then proverbially teach them to fish.

And so Beijing prefers to prop-up the Kim regime, tolerating even the murder of its politically unconnected citizens so as to avoid that nightmare scenario. Unpleasant, yes, but a reality nevertheless.