Cina, Nord Corea, commercio, sanzioni
Nyt 061027
Le sanzioni non intaccano il commercio tra Nord Corea e
Cina
JIM YARDLEY
Nessun segnale di cambiamento nei controlli doganali alla frontiera
tra Cina e Nord Corea (N-C)in seguito alle sanzioni ONU.
La Cina rimane il maggior paese donatore e fornitore di
petrolio del N-C; viceversa al Cina sta aumentando le importazioni di carbone
ed elettricità dal N-C;
-
in 10 anni è raddoppiato l’interscambio tra i
due paesi: dai $490mn. del 1995 a $1,1MD nel 2005, e il deficit commerciale nord-coreano,
anche perchè la Cina non vende più il petrolio a prezzo sussidiato; il N-C importa
meno macchinari e materie prime dalla Cina, mentre è aumentato l’import di alimentari,
abbigliamento, varie, televisori e elettrodomestici sorpassati e petrolio. -
Secondo un investitore cinese i nord-coreani starebbero
chiudendo fabbriche; non ci sono garanzie statali o protezioni per le relazioni
d’affari con i nord-coreani. -
I segnali contrastanti della Cina sulla sua volontà
di imporre l’embargo al N-C derivano dall’incremento delle relazioni commerciali
sino-nordcoreani. -
La Cina rappresenta circa il 40% del commercio
estero complessivo N-C.
Alcune banche cinesi di Dandone hanno congelato alcuni conti
e transazioni finanziarie con il N-C; le ispezioni lungo gli 886 km di confine
sono più problematiche, anche perché non ne sono stati definiti diversi particolari.
Imprenditori cinesi stanno iniziando ad acquistare quote di operazioni
minerarie, e stanno cercando di accedere al Mar del Giappone prendendo in
leasing un porto del N-C come potenziale centro di spedizioni via mare.
Secondo i media cinesi ci sono diversi progetti cinesi per
la costruzione di strade di collegamento tra centri nel N-E della Cina e la costa
n-c, e piani per la trasformazione del porto coreano di Rajin in centro di spedizione delle merci dalla Cina.
Il Sud
Crea è in concorrenza con la Cina per il predominio nelle relazioni con il N-C.Nyt 061027
Sanctions
Don’t Dent N. Korea-China Trade
By JIM YARDLEY
SANHE, China, Oct. 25 — At the isolated border
crossing in this small Chinese town, no one noticed when North Korea conducted
its nuclear test in an underground mine about 90 miles away. Nearly three weeks
later, no one seems to have noticed the recent United Nations sanctions against
North Korea,
either.
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 non-military
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.”
New York Times