BEIJING (WN) China will suspend all imports
of coal from North Korea until the end of the year, the Commerce Ministry
announced Saturday, in a surprise move that would cut off a major financial
lifeline for Pyongyang and significantly enhance the effectiveness of U.N.
sanctions.
China understands South Korea's need to
protect its security but Seoul still needs to respect Beijing's concerns about
the deployment of an advanced U.S. anti-missile system, Chinese Foreign
Minister Wang Yi told his South Korean counterpart.
China has repeatedly expressed opposition to
South Korea's planned deployment later this year of the U.S. Terminal High
Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system, which Seoul and Washington say is needed
to defend against North Korea.
China worries the system's powerful radar can
penetrate its territory and it has objected to the deployment. Meeting on
Saturday on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Wang repeated to
South Korea's Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se China's opposition to THAAD,
China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
Coal is North Korea’s largest export item,
and also China’s greatest point of leverage over the regime.The ministry said
the ban would come into force Sunday and be effective until Dec. 31. China said
the move was designed to implement November’s United Nations Security Council
resolution that tightened sanctions against the regime in the wake of its last
nuclear test.
But experts said the move also reflected
Beijing’s deep frustration with North Korea over its recent missile test and
the assassination of Kim Jong Un’s half brother in Malaysia. Kim Jong Nam had
been hosted and protected by China for many years, and his murder, if proved to
be conducted on Pyongyang’s orders, would be seen as a direct affront to
Beijing, experts said.
China has also come under significant
international pressure to do more to rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons and
ballistic missile programs, while Chinese President Xi Jinping is believed to
have become increasingly irritated by Kim Jong Un’s behavior.
North Korea is China’s fourth-biggest
supplier of coal. Although China announced in April that it would ban North
Korean coal imports to comply with U.N. sanctions, it made exceptions for
deliveries intended for the “people’s well-being” and not connected to North
Korea’s missile programs.
In practice, that exception was the cover for
coal to continue to flow across the border in huge quantities, with imports of
non-lignite coal up 14.5 percent last year to 22.5 million metric tons (24.8
million U.S. tons). But in a sign that Beijing’s patience was running out, it
rejected a coal shipment from North Korea worth about $1 million Monday, the
day after the test of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, South Korea’s
Yonhap News Agency reported.
China has long been reluctant to do anything
that might threaten the stability of the North Korean regime mainly because it
fears that the reunification of the Korean Peninsula could bring South Korea,
an American ally that hosts U.S. troops, right up to its border. Given that a
total ban on coal imports could be destabilizing, it remains to be seen how
firmly the pledge will be carried out.
But Pyongyang’s unwillingness to consider
China’s interests has badly damaged or even destroyed trust between the long-standing allies. China still places a premium on stability, but
Xi Jinping is growing more and more frustrated with Kim Jong Un,” said Paul
Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing, adding that the
missile test and the assassination were seen as “serious offenses.”
“Beijing took the assassination as a direct
affront to China. Xi is less willing to tolerate these provocations,” he said.
“China is putting a squeeze on its economic lifeline to send a message to
Pyongyang.”
Wang Weimin, a professor at the School of
International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai,
said sympathy for North Korea’s national security concerns had disappeared in
Beijing, and “blood ties” between the countries had been broken as it became
clear that the regime could not be tamed.
“If we choose an ally that can’t be tamed, we
might become the biggest loser,” he said. “That’s why we are more and more
strict with North Korea. Now self-interest is central. We won’t pay attention
to North Korea’s interests anymore.” President
Trump has also called on China to put more pressure on North Korea to stop its
nuclear weapons program, and the subject may have come up during a telephone
conversation he had with Xi earlier this month.
China has “total control over North Korea,”
Trump said in an interview on “Fox & Friends” in early January. “And China
should solve that problem. And if they don’t solve the problem, we should make
trade very difficult for China.”
The U.N. Security Council condemned North
Korea’s latest missile test Monday and urged members to “redouble efforts” to
enforce sanctions. That appeal came after an emergency meeting in New York
called by the United States, Japan and South Korea.
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