China holds key to N. Korea sanctions

[USA11B]

By GREG BAKER and JOE McDONALD, Associated Press Writers
Last Updated: October 12, 2006, 20 AM PDT

DANDONG, China (AP) - Scores of Chinese trucks rumbled across the Friendship Bridge into North Korea on Wednesday, part of a stream of subsidized food and fuel from China that keeps leader Kim Jong Il's regime afloat.

As the world weighs possible sanctions against the North for its claimed nuclear test, the key to enforcing them lies with Beijing and how much it is willing to squeeze its tiny ally.

China is the North's economic lifeline, providing up to 90 percent of its oil and 80 percent of the consumer goods in a nation so poor that it cannot feed its 23 million people without foreign donations.

"Any type of sanctions that have any bite to them certainly would plunge North Korea back into famine," said Peter Beck, director of the Seoul office of the International Crisis Group, a think tank.

The United States wants the U.N. to adopt a series of measures including inspecting cargo to and from North Korea, banning trade in luxury goods and military items and restricting financial dealings.

But Beijing opposes squeezing the North too hard, apparently afraid that such punishments would lead to the regime's collapse, unleashing a flood of refugees and eliminating the country's role as a buffer between China and U.S. troops in South Korea.

"I'm quite sure China is not prepared to support a full-on economic embargo and a blockade. Limited sanctions possibly, but not an outright blockade," Beck said.

North Korea's No. 2 economic partner is South Korea, which is also reluctant to back tough sanctions. And without Beijing and Seoul taking part, any attempt to police shipping "will surely be only a symbolic gesture," he said. "They would be able to harass ships but not stop all North Korean shipping."

After a one-day suspension Tuesday while the North marked an official holiday, Chinese shipments were back in full swing Wednesday. In Dandong, a column of 81 cargo-laden trucks rolled across the Friendship Bridge into the North in one 30-minute period. A 20-car cargo train pulled out of Dandong for the North.

Chinese and North Korean soldiers patrolled their respective sides of the Yalu River, which forms a border between Dandong and the North Korean town of Sinuiju. Nearby, AP Television News footage showed uniformed North Koreans in the fields, harvesting corn.

Chinese goods reach North Korea by road and rail, and oil is delivered via a cross-border pipeline. North Korea also has a rail line to Russia, but Pyongyang lost its sea link to Japan on Wednesday when Tokyo banned the North's ships from its waters. South Korea, meanwhile, has very limited access by road to a joint export manufacturing zone and a tourist resort in the North.

The contrast between towns on the Chinese and North Korean sides of their border is striking.

Bustling Chinese towns have emerged where bridges cross the Yalu and Tumen Rivers into North Korea, featuring modern hotels in neon-lighted Dandong and Yanji. Dilapidated buildings litter the North's side, dark at night except for floodlights trained on a statue of Kim Il Sung, the North Korean state's communist founder.

The North's economy collapsed in the mid-1990s following the loss of Soviet aid, but foreign trade has risen sharply as it eased its self-imposed isolation in hopes of spurring a revival. Still, Chinese and South Korean figures indicate total trade last year was less than $4 billion - the equivalent of less than a single day's imports by the United States.

South Korea saw total trade with the North jump by more than 50 percent last year to just over $1 billion, according to the South's Unification Ministry. South Korean companies have factories in an export zone in the North Korean city of Kaesong and investments in Diamond Mountain, a resort for foreigners, both accessible by road.

But China is the North's dominant trade partner, with total imports and exports jumping 14 percent last year to $2.2 billion, according to the Commerce Ministry in Beijing.

The North relies on China for 90 percent of its oil, according to a report by Li Dunqiu, director of Korea research at the Chinese Cabinet's Center for Development Studies. Li said the North was working with China to exploit oil reserves off its west coast.

In return, China buys North Korean goods that range from minerals to seafood - but trade is mostly one way, and Pyongyang ran a $1 billion deficit last year. China also has invested in North Korean industrial projects, including a glass factory near Pyongyang. A Chinese company manages the North Korean capital's biggest department store.

Although China is afraid of the North Korean regime's collapse, Beck said it isn't clear that comprehensive sanctions would accomplish this.

"Even if China were to participate in sanctions, it would make life very difficult for most if not all North Koreans, but the regime would survive," he said. "They'll just go into a hunker-down mode and life will get far more grim than it is today."

But sanctions could have unexpected and dangerous effects on a North Korean people grown used to economic misery, said Cui Yingjiu, a Chinese expert on North Korea and former classmate of Kim Jong Il.

"A friend from North Korea visited me the day before yesterday. He said, 'Ordinary people have been living on famine's edge for so long they're at their limit,'" said Cui. "People are so worn out that joining up to mount an insurrection is unlikely. But they're not afraid of war."

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McDonald reported from Beijing; Associated Press writer Charles Hutzler also contributed from Beijing.

SOURCE

[USA11B]

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