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Alias
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:14 am Post subject: China freezes out Pyongyang |
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| Quote: |
July 25, 2006
CHINA'S relationship with its former satellite North Korea is unravelling fast, underlined by reports yesterday that the People's Bank of China has frozen all North Korea's accounts.
South Korean parliamentarian Park Jin said he had learned on a visit to Washington that through its action the Chinese central bank had responded to persistent North Korean counterfeiting of its currency, the yuan.
A spokesman for the People's Bank of China yesterday declined to deny Mr Park's claim, saying, however, that the bank had not yet issued a statement confirming the claim.
Mr Park's account helps explain why China did not respond directly to the US's imposition of sanctions on Banco Delta Asia in Macau, a Chinese special administrative region.
Washington, which froze $32million worth of accounts at the bank, accused North Korea of circulating counterfeit US dollars printed in North Korea, which has long used Macau as its principal international financial contact point.
Indeed, Mr Park said China was working alongside the US to track and smash North Korea's counterfeiting operations.
It is 10 days since the UN Security Council unanimously passed resolution 1695 -- drafted chiefly by China -- responding to North Korea's launch of seven missiles by blocking the shipment of materials Pyongyang might use for the construction of missiles or nuclear weapons, demanding that it suspend its missile program and urging that it return without pre-conditions to the six-party talks -- with China, the US, South Korea, Russia and Japan.
Frustration is growing with North Korea's failure to respond.
In China's case, this is multiplied because it first ignored Premier Wen Jiabao, who said: "We hope that the various parties will proceed from the greater interest of maintaining stability on the Korean peninsula and refrain from taking measures that will worsen the situation."
Then, a fortnight ago, Beijing sent Vice-Foreign Minister Wu Dawei and Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu to Pyongyang for six days -- without their meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-il or making significant progress.
China has become North Korea's lifeline for oil and food, and in recent years a source of $1.33billion in annual aid.
Last year, China also accounted for 53 per cent, worth $2.1 billion, of North Korea's total trade, while China's investment in North Korea grew to $133 million.
It is thus almost inevitable that North Korea should extend its global counterfeiting to include China, its most important economic partner, with which it shares a 1400km border -- more than six times that between North and South Korea.
China's currency, slowly appreciating against the US dollar, is also strong and circulates widely throughout the region, where once the greenback was the king of trade. And Chinese goods are highly attractive to North Koreans.
China's continued lead over the North Korea crisis has restored it to a central position in the US's approach to north Asia, just at a time when Japan's leadership is about to change, with nationalist Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe almost certain to succeed Junichiro Koizumi as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and thus as prime minister.
On Thursday and Friday, the foreign ministers of the six parties, including North Korea's Paek Nam-sun, will be in Kuala Lumpur attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' regional forum.
North Korea is expected to be a major topic at the forum, during which China, the convenor of the six-party talks, is making efforts to arrange a meeting of the six. If Mr Paek agrees to participate, this will mark a minor breakthrough. |
This could prove to be interesting. |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 7:27 pm Post subject: Re: China freezes out Pyongyang |
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| Alias wrote: |
This could prove to be interesting. |
Indeed. North K is becoming truly isolated. i think they cause China some loss of face with the nuke testing thing.
another perspective (albeit from the Korea times):
Can China and North Korea Mend the Fence?
7/26/2006
By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter
The relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang looks to have reached its worst point ever, following North Korea's test-fire of missiles on July 5.
A number of signals indicating the worsening relationship include Beijing's agreement to Washington's request to airlift three North Korean refugees directly from China to the United States last weekend.
In the past, this would have been difficult, given that Beijing has agreed to return refugees, called economic migrants by China, to North Korea.
If necessary, Beijing has always expelled them to a third country first, from which they can seek asylum, mostly in South Korea.
Another important signal was Beijing's change of stance at the U.N. Security Council that led to the adoption of a resolution on July 15, condemning the North's missile launches.
It was interpreted as Beijing's displeasure at Pyongyang's decision to go ahead with the missile tests, despite China's persistent diplomatic efforts to prevent the North from making worse the security situation in Northeast Asia.
China's anger might have been intensified as it did not get a prior notice of the missile tests, hurting its pride as a ``big brother�� that provides the largest portion of humanitarian aid to the North.
Under these circumstances, it is a reasonable guess that the Beijing-Pyongyang relationship is in crisis.
But Lee Tai-hwan, an expert on China-North Korea relations, told The Korea Times on Wednesday that it is not proper to estimate the situation is as bad as it was in August 1992 when South Korea and China struck diplomatic relations.
``There are other factors to think of before jumping to such a conclusion,�� said Lee, a senior research fellow at Sejong Institute in Seoul. ``I can say their relationship is not yet over. But I think it is true that it will take time for them to restore their relations.��
He said China still needs North Korea to materialize its Northeast Asia strategies, but Beijing might have concluded that it needed to warn the North over the missile launches.
``What China wants now is stability on the Korean Peninsula,'' Lee said. ``The North, however, destabilized the security situation here. So China thinks the North made a mistake.''
China and North Korea suffered a crisis in their relationship in 1992 when Pyongyang virtually shut down its exchange programs with Beijing in protest of China's establishment of diplomatic ties with South Korea.
It was an indicator that Seoul's ``northward policy�� of isolating North Korea from the former Soviet block was working.
Defining the situation a quasi-wartime, Pyongyang declared its withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in March 1993 and began to exercise its trademark brinkmanship policies _ a strong indication that its foreign policy would not be in sync with that of China anymore.
But the two sides managed to recover their relations in June 1999 when Kim Young-nam, the North's standing committee chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly, visited Beijing.
In the past, it took seven years for them to mend their relationship. The question is how long it will take this time.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200607/kt2006072617533410160.htm |
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matthews_world
Joined: 15 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 9:29 pm Post subject: |
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| Ah shit! Time to run for the hills? |
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