Reclusive leader's secret visit to China could bring improved ties.

In his first venture outside Stalinist North Korea in 17 years, reclusive leader Kim Jong Il slipped into China this week to discuss his upcoming summit with South Korea's president, tour a computer company and even praise China's capitalist reforms. Kim, who arrived Monday, was amazed by computers, was hugged repeatedly by his Chinese hosts and revealed that he had stopped drinking and smoking, China's state-run press said Thursday.In television footage of a meeting with China's President Jiang Zemin,Kim sported a bouffant hairdo and a slightly ill-fitting gray Mao suit. Jiang wore a Western-style suit and tie. Kim's three-day trip, made just two weeks before he is scheduled to meet his South Korean counterpart, Kim Dae Jung, in a historic summit in Pyongyang, provided the first glimpse of a man who runs one of the world's last hard-line communist states. It also provided some insight into a leader who reportedly has a mercurial temper and a weak physical constitution. Kim, 58, appeared healthy, however, and was shown on China's state-run television news Thursday night kissing Jiang and engaging in an elaborate hug of a nonplussed Hu Jintao, China's vice president.China's government acknowledged Kim's stealth diplomacy mission Thursday, after he was already back home, and gave no explanation for the secrecy.