North Korea's nuclear test puts China in a tight spot

Decades after border town Dandong was rocked by the Korean war, Beijing is witnessing rising tensions with its troubled neighbour

• Tania Branigan
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 May 2009 22.09 BST
• Article history

North Korean workers on the Yalu river, which borders China. The country is heavily dependent on its old ally, which provides up to 90% of its energy and 40% of its food. Photograph: Dan Chung

Grandfather Li sat by the Yalu river, feeding ice-cream to the little girl on his lap and gazing across to the desolate factories of Sinuiju, North Korea.

"The first day the planes came over we were so scared," he recalled. He was 10 when the US bombed the nearby bridge to halt Chinese support for its neighbour in the Korean war; a few spans still stand as evidence of the raids.

"When the war ended [in 1953], we were very happy, a bit proud for helping them – and relieved."

It has been decades since American bombs rocked Dandong, the main crossing on the 800-mile Chinese-North Korean border. But this week another explosion shook China and the new threat is from its old ally. North Korea's nuclear test has raised tensions throughout the region – and increased pressure on China to rein in its neighbour.

China provides as much as 90% of the North's energy and 40% of its food. Like Russia, it has used its security council veto against attempts to isolate Pyongyang. Without its support, its poor neighbour would struggle to survive.

But now it appears that the North may be exhausting Beijing's patience. This week's nuclear and missile tests, last month's rocket launch, increasing threats and the suspected restarting of the Yongbyon nuclear plant have reignited debate about how best to deal with a troublesome neighbour.

Beijing was swift to slap down the nuclear test in a rare act of public criticism and the US appears hopeful that it will sign a security council resolution toughening existing sanctions – agreed in 2006, but only loosely enforced

"This time, North Korea has gone too far," said Zhang Liangui, a Korea expert at Beijing's Central Party School, which trains Communist party officials. "What they have done has hurt its relationship with China."

In Li's boyhood, Mao Zedong declared that China and North Korea were "as close as lips and teeth". Hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers died fighting for the North. But now, China fears North Korea's sabre-rattling could prompt or justify Japanese remilitarisation, further defence spending in the South or increase US military support for Seoul – shifting the regional balance of power to its disadvantage. Any military skirmish could have a devastating impact on Sino-South Korean relations.

"If they launch even a limited conflict with South Korea, China will face immediate strategic and diplomatic problems," said Professor Shi Yinhong, a foreign policy expert at Renmin University. But analysts see a deeper reason behind China's growing anger towards Pyongyang. North Korea's aggression is widely regarded as an attempt to grab the attention of the new US administration and force it to engage. As such, they posit, it reflects Pyongyang's distrust and dislike of its protector.

"Of course Beijing is mad about it," said Professor Huang Jing, an expert on north Asia security and currently visiting professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

"The North is basically saying: we don't trust you – we are going to speak to Washington directly."

For now, however, Dandong is where North Korea meets the world; in so far as such a closed country cares to meet it at all. For most Chinese, the closest they get is posing in traditional Korean dress for a snapshot at the Broken Bridge, or taking a tourist boat along the river and peering at their neighbours through binoculars. Armed North Korean guards ensure that no one gets too close.

Until the 1970s, the North was relatively prosperous compared to its neighbour. Now looking across the river is "like looking into China in the 50s", said one resident. "Everyone's on bicycles and they all seem to wear the same coloured clothes."

Along the upper reaches of the Yalu, North Koreans wash clothes and bathe off the banks. Cyclists pedal along the long shore road and the only vehicles are a police car and a workers' truck.

But the real difference is evident as one comes closer to Dandong, a city of bulldozers, cranes and high rises; of gaudy karaoke bars and flashy restaurants, zooming cars and tourist tat.

Sinujiu has a ferris wheel, but it does not turn. Few boats seem to arrive at its docks; smoke emerges from only one of the factory chimneys.

As night falls, the contrast between these worlds grows starker. The lights on the Friendship Bridge stop halfway — a startling reminder of North Korea's fuel poverty. While neon lights the Chinese skyline, the opposite shore is shrouded in darkness.

Many in Dandong feel sympathy as well as exasperation for their struggling neighbours. "Maybe they wouldn't do things like this test if places like Japan weren't so mean to them," one resident suggested. Historical amity and education plays its part; the city is, after all, home to the Chinese Memorial Hall of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. So too does trade. Figures from a Seoul-based business association suggest China's share of the North's trade rose from less than a third in 2003 to almost three-quarters in 2008, when exports hit $2bn (£1.2bn).

More than two-thirds of the goods comes via this city daily, in lorries shuttling across the Friendship Bridge bearing instant noodles and flour but also spirits, electric rice cookers and even vehicles for the favoured elite.

In the streets around the city's customs house, North Korean traders stock up on Chinese cigarettes, clothing and electrical goods. But Yu Yanhua, who runs a small grocery store, said trade has taken a hit in recent days. "They've been checking more strictly at customs since the nuclear test," he said. "I worry that it's going to get worse."

Tougher action is not unprecedented. As well as clear diplomatic condemnation of weapons tests, China briefly cut off oil supplies in 2003, and again three years later after the North's first nuclear and long distance missile test. It has tightened visas for North Koreans and helped scrutinise bank accounts when the US treasury sought to clamp down on North Korea's international banking.

"Beijing has really shifted its position since the first long-range missile test and particularly nuclear test [in 2006]," said Eric Hagt, director of the China programme at the Centre for Defence Information in Washington. He pointed to a party meeting that year which described a nuclear North Korea as a challenge to China's "core interests".

Yet China fears the instability economic action could bring. There are already thought to be around 50,000 North Koreans living illicitly in China; the last thing Beijing wants is millions of refugees flooding across the border. The Associated Press reported this week that construction of a massive concrete and barbed wire fence along vulnerable parts of the Yalu River appeared to have been stepped up in recent days.

China's ability to contain North Korea is critical to its influence in the region. Yet the more it exercises that power, the more hostile the North becomes.

"China does not want to push Pyongyang away. The bottom line is that – like everyone else – China does not want to solve other people's problems with its resources," said Huang.

Those sentiments are felt on Dandong's waterfront as well as in Beijing. "I'm certainly worried by the test ... They are trying to prove they are an international power," said 18-year-old Yang Ya, who felt the North was now more of a threat than the US. "But I don't think it's fair to ask China to handle it all. This is everyone's problem."