From the New York Times:
Jim Yardley
10/25/2006
[edited]Sanhe, China–Truckers carrying goods into North Korea across the sludge-colored Tumen River say inspections are unchanged on the Chinese side. Customs agents rarely open boxes here or at two other border crossings in this mountainous region, truckers and private transport companies say.
Nor are any fences visible, like the barrier under construction near China’s busiest border crossing at the city of Dandong. There were early reports that inspectors in Dandong were at least opening trucks for a look, but so far statistics and anecdotal reports in the Chinese news media indicate that, essentially, everything remains the same.
What is visible here, though, is the growing and, in some ways, surprisingly complicated trade relationship between China and North Korea. China remains North Korea’s most important aid donor and oil supplier, but, conversely, China is now importing growing amounts of coal and electricity from North Korea. Chinese entrepreneurs, meanwhile, are starting to buy shares in North Korean mining operations and, in one case, trying to gain access to the Sea of Japan by leasing a North Korean port as a potential shipping hub.
The upswing in Chinese economic activity — which is already raising questions about whether the intent is more strategic than commercial — is one of the reasons that China has sent mixed signals about how aggressive it will be in inspecting border trade to meet the United Nations sanctions. For now, at least, some truckers in this region say the only change in border inspections has come on the North Korean side, where customs agents are checking loads more carefully for items deemed contraband by Kim Jong-il’s government.
“We used to sit with North Koreans that we know and have a chat,” said Jiang Zhuchun, a trucker waiting to cross into North Korea on Tuesday afternoon. “But after the nuclear test, we are only allowed to sit alone in our trucks.”
The United States has praised China for approving the sanctions against North Korea, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used her visit to Beijing last week to emphasize the common desire to restart diplomatic talks on North Korea’s nuclear program. China’s leaders are said to be deeply angered over the nuclear test and have signaled they may take a harder line against their longtime ally. Last week, some banks in Dandong froze certain accounts and financial transactions with North Korea.
But the question of inspections along the 866-mile border between China and North Korea is a different matter. The sanctions authorized countries to inspect cargo entering and leaving North Korea and barred the sale or transfer of material that can be used to make nuclear weapons. Yet the sanctions are still less than two weeks old, and some details have still not been worked out. For example, the sanctions ban luxury goods without defining them.
The United States wants tightened border inspections by China as a tool for squeezing the North Korean economy and ensuring that North Korea cannot buy or sell nuclear materials. China is worried that destabilizing North Korea could begin an exodus of refugees and has resisted changing inspections. This week, with rumors swirling about a possible border crackdown, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said China intended to comply fully with the sanctions, but also said inspections along the border would remain “normal.”
The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Region, the name of the sprawling district that includes the Sanhe border checkpoint, is not the primary trade route between China and North Korea; Dandong, with its more direct route to Pyongyang, the North’s capital, is by far the busiest. But the Yanbian area is wedged into a geopolitical hotspot where China, North Korea and Russia all come together.
In interviews and visits to three crossings from Yanbian into North Korea, truckers, transportation company agents, investors and others confirmed without exception that trade is continuing across the border much as it always has. Customs agents examine bills of lading but usually open shipments only when they are tipped in advance to someone trying to smuggle goods like beer or liquor without paying customs duties, several people said.
“No matter who you talk to, they will tell you there is not much difference,” said Jin Lanzhu, whose trading company is one of the largest in the region.
On Wednesday morning inside the Chinese customs yard in the border city of Tumen, small groups of North Koreans, each wearing their mandatory pins with images of either North Korean leader Kim Jong-il or his father, Kim Il-sung, waited to cross the bridge. They had nylon sacks stuffed with shoes and clothes, television sets, a refrigerator. Some carried bags of rice.
“How many bags do you have?” asked a female Chinese customs agent in a blue uniform. She looked them over and walked away without opening any. She did forbid the North Koreans to take several boxes of fruit because of a problem with worms. Then, the men began loading the sacks onto a flatbed truck operated by the customs office to carry smaller loads to the North Korean side. Two North Korean women complained to a local taxi driver that they had to pay 400 yuan, or about $50, for the service.
“They don’t really check over here,” one North Korean woman said of Chinese customs. “They do on the North Korean side.”
A similar scene unfolded later in the day at a smaller crossing in the dingy town of Kaishan, where the customs port is so small that trucks take a dirt road to a crumbling checkpoint. On Wednesday, a young soldier watched laborers load about 150 used televisions and boxes of medicine into a North Korean truck that had crossed the river to collect the shipment.
“I’m here for security,” the soldier said.
Trade between China and North Korea has grown rapidly in recent years — as has North Korea’s trade deficit with China, in part, because China no longer appears to be selling oil at a subsidized rate. China now accounts for almost 40 percent of North Korea’s total foreign trade; bilateral trade has more than doubled to $1.1 billion in 2005 from $490 million in 1995. In Yanbian alone, trade with North Korea jumped 82 percent in 2004 and another 20 percent in 2005, according to a local newspaper account.
Divining what the increased traffic says about the state of North Korea’s economy is a subject of debate. New research and interviews in the Yanbian region suggest that North Korea, a country that regularly suffers blackouts, is now exporting growing amounts of coal, minerals and even electricity to China, which is hungry for energy and raw materials. In exchange, North Korea is no longer importing as much raw material and machinery as it had in the past.
Instead, North Korea is importing food, clothes, daily sundries, outdated televisions and appliances and, of course, oil. The trend could suggest that North Korea’s recent experiments with private markets may be expanding, some analysts said.
A recent study by the Nautilus Institute, a San Francisco-based research group, used customs statistics to describe the trend, but also concluded that it might indicate that North Korea’s nonmilitary manufacturing industries were in sharp decline. One Chinese investor in a North Korean coal mine agreed. “They seemed to have stopped the factories,” said the investor, who asked not to be identified. He said doing business with North Korea was very risky and cautioned that numerous Chinese businessmen had lost money. “There are zero guarantees and protections.”
Even so, Chinese entrepreneurs and companies, both private and state-owned, are starting to buy interests in North Korean mines to export raw materials. The amount of investment is not clearly defined, but different Chinese proposals call for building truck routes between inland trade centers in northeast China to the North Korean coast, according to Chinese media accounts.
A Chinese property developer, Fan Yingsheng, told the Chinese news media that despite the nuclear test, he was still pursuing plans to develop the North Korean port of Rajin into a shipping center for goods from China. He said he would soon fly to Pyongyang to sign a final agreement.
The flurry of Chinese activity has not gone unnoticed by South Korea and others in the region, analysts say. Like China, South Korea has resisted harsh economic sanctions and refused to shut down its own trade deals with North Korea in part because of concerns about a swift collapse of the North Korean government. But South Korea is also positioning itself, to some degree against China, to be the dominant player in the future of North Korea.
China, meanwhile, has said the activity is not strategic positioning but natural economic outgrowth for a booming, entrepreneurial economy in need of resources. Li Dunqiu, a North Korea specialist with a research institute under China’s State Council, or cabinet, recently wrote that “laws of the market economy” were the driving force in Chinese investment in North Korea.
Along the border, it is easy to see how the daily traffic from China is a lifeline for North Korea. One woman from Yanbian said her family had recently come across to buy rice and other essentials. But Mr. Jin, the owner of the trading company, said charity was not at the essence of China’s trade with North Korea.
“The business interest is the most important thing,” he said. “Helping them comes after that.” Then, pausing to reflect on the potential and perils of trading with North Korea, he added: “North Korea is just like China in the past. It is a blank sheet of paper. You can draw wherever you want to. The question is whether the paper is going to be there at all times for you to draw on.”
