Word: dandong
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...also says it had increased inspections of goods passing from China to North Korea by land, although there will be no inspections of seaborne cargo. Chinese newspapers reported last week that authorities had closed all border crossings with North Korea except for the most heavily trafficked one, at Dandong...
...China really intends to exert pressure on Pyongyang, Dandong will be the place where the hammer will drop. But there's reason to doubt China's readiness to take further steps toward squeezing North Korea. One reason is self-interest. Trade with the North is vital to border cities like Dandong, which has registered double-digit growth in recent years, according to local government statistics. Much of that is due to its trade with North Korea, which has more than quadrupled since 1999. Others have benefited from doing business with the North: energy and fuels constitute the bulk of China...
...importance of the North Korean market to the Chinese helps to explain why officials have been relatively slow to enforce the U.N. sanctions. At Dandong's three-story customs compound, a plump, middle-aged man who calls himself Li and says he is a truck driver gestures toward the 15 or so vehicles waiting to be inspected before driving onto the bridge over the Yalu. "The inspections are a little stricter, but it's really just for show. They poke around a bit and then...
...prospect of a humanitarian crisis is not lost on Chinese officials, who find themselves trying to engage North Korea while at the same time walling it off. Above Dandong sits a watchtower whose stone battlements are silhouetted by the dying rays. The tower is one of the first outposts of China's Great Wall, remnants of which wind up and down the hills leading to Dandong. Now China is building another wall, a fence along its entire border with North Korea. But even when that structure is complete, it seems unlikely that Beijing will pay much more than lip service...
...revealing that even in the wake of Kim's nuclear detonation, most Chinese in places like Dandong regard their neighbor with pity more than fear. On the highway leading out of the city, a farmer sits astride a brand-new bright blue motorbike and waits as a fruit seller packs up three large bundles of apples and pears. "I'll take this down to the river tonight, and the North Koreans will be there to trade as usual," he says. He says he swaps the fruit for sheets of copper, most probably stolen, usually one piece of fruit...