ShareThisBy GEOFFREY YORK
Friday, November 17, 2006
Mr. Li, a veteran 60-year-old Chinese businessman, sells $2-million to $3-million in goods to North Korea every year. And, despite sanctions that the White House describes as a tough new measure, he is confident he can keep selling the same amount of goods to the newly nuclear state next year.
Here on the North Korean border, the cross-border trade is still flourishing. Dozens of trucks and trains continue to rumble across the Friendship Bridge from China into North Korea every day.
"There are just as many trucks as there were before the sanctions," Li says.
The United Nations sanctions, passed after Pyongyang's nuclear test on Oct. 9, have had little effect here. Sympathetic to their neighbor, and undeterred by the vaguely worded sanctions, the Chinese traders are doing nothing to reduce their exports to the Stalinist nation.
Li, who declines to give his full name, sells everything from instant noodles to industrial machinery to North Korea at this Chinese border city, the crossing point for the bulk of China's exports to Korea. Even if the sanctions are tightened, he makes it clear that he has no intention of bending to the international-pressure campaign.
"We understand why North Korea did this nuclear test," he says, his voice rising with emotion. "And we support the North Korean people. "We don't care about these U.N. sanctions. They're unfair."
His description of the impact of the sanctions is confirmed by Chinese and North Korean truckers at a warehouse compound on the outskirts of Dandong, where trucks are loaded with crates of goods to be driven across the Yalu River into North Korea. Journalists are barred from the compound, but three hours spent inside its gates last week showed it was bustling and busy, with no signs of a slowdown.
"I don't see much change," said Guo Tianyi, a Chinese trucker who brings cargo into North Korea. "It's not any stricter than before. It's working normally."
A Chinese exporter, watching a truck being loaded, had the same view of the sanctions. "It's not very serious for us," he said.
One of the provisions in the sanctions was intended to block luxury goods from entering North Korea. But this has little impact on the Chinese traders, who primarily sell everyday household products, basic food staples and industrial equipment. "So far, I haven't heard of any goods being stopped at the border because they are luxury goods," Shan said.
"It's very hard to define what luxury goods are."
Asked about the ban on luxury goods, one trucker in the warehouse compound was eager to help get them into North Korea on his truck. "If it's not too big, we can put it underneath something," he volunteered.
About 70 or 80 trucks _ the same number as before the sanctions _ are still being loaded with goods for North Korea at the warehouse compound every day, the exporter said. At the compound last week, Chinese and North Korean trucks were being loaded with an impressive variety of Chinese merchandise: bags of garlic and apples, crates of chicken, frozen seafood, bananas, flour, instant noodles, television sets, blankets, plastic piping, cans of paint, floor tiles, aluminium siding, industrial equipment, and many other goods.
Several government inspectors were moving among the trucks, checking the cargo. China has reportedly tightened its inspection of the cross-border trade, as required by the UN sanctions, but truckers say the inspectors do not block any goods from crossing. They speculated that certain chemicals might be more restricted as a result of the sanctions, but even those could probably gain approval.
"We think the UN sanctions are very tolerant," said Shan Jie, a businessman who has been selling goods to North Korea for the past 13 years. "They're not very strict. The government still supports us because we do normal trade with North Korea. We can export there any time _ there's been no change."
Outside Dandong, there's a similar picture along most of the border between China and North Korea. It still seems to be business as usual. At the border city of Nanping, for example, up to 45 trucks are reportedly crossing the border every day, bringing iron ore to China from a mine in North Korea. The shipments have continued as normal since the sanctions.
Many news reports have focused on a concrete-and-barbed-wire fence that China is building along a small portion of its North Korean border. But the fence has nothing to do with the UN sanctions. "It was begun a long time before the nuclear test," Li said. "It's designed to protect China from problems such as refugees."
News media reports have also publicized the halting of financial transfers to North Korea.
