Home  >  China

Category: China

March 9, 2016

U.N. report: Bank of China told shipper in illegal arms deal to hide N. Korean links

Today, the U.N. Panel of Experts monitoring (non-)compliance with its North Korea sanctions released its latest report, and it’s a doozy. Including exhibits, it’s almost 300 pages long, and the substance should be material for several posts. Our first installment comes from the December 2015 conviction of Chinpo Shipping over the 2013 Cuba arms shipment. Remember last July, when I asked, “What about the Bank of China?” Well, we have our answer, and from the look of it, the Bank of...
Categories China/Money Laundering/Sanctions
March 6, 2016

WaPo editorial: “China’s switch” on N. Korea sanctions “had a lot to do with” H.R. 757.

After the President signed H.R. 757 into law, but before the U.N. Security Council approved resolution 2270, sanctions skeptics predicted that the new U.S. law would complicate diplomatic efforts to get China to enforce U.N. sanctions. Events thus far have refuted that view. After the President signed the new law, China, which had inflexibly opposed new U.N. sanctions for weeks, reversed course and voted for the strongest North Korea sanctions resolution so far. Even before China’s official retreat, China’s banks had already begun to freeze...
Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions
February 24, 2016

Yonhap: Chinese company stops buying North Korean coal

In what could be the latest financial hit to Pyongyang, Yonhap reports that an important Chinese customer has stopped buying coal from North Korea: A Chinese company in the northeastern border city of Dandong has been ordered by China’s commerce ministry to halt its coal trade with North Korea starting next month, according to a state-run Chinese newspaper Wednesday. Citing an unnamed Chinese businessman who operates a coal business with North Korea, the state-run Global Times newspaper said the order...
Categories China/NK Economics
February 24, 2016

Hey, China, let’s make a deal about North Korea. You’re going to love it.

Good morning, Vice-Minister Chen. I hope you enjoyed sampling our great country’s authentic cuisine at lunch today. If not, I keep a bottle of Pepto in my desk. As you know, the new Trump Administration is all about cutting government spending, although we know how to invest, too.  The neon signage and gold-leaf bathroom fixtures have been a yuuge morale boost here at Foggy Bottom. And yes, those are real diamonds on my pinkie ring. That was my annual bonus...
Categories China/Diplomacy/Humor/Satire
February 21, 2016

China’s largest bank freezes North Korean accounts

Not even a week after President Obama signed the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act into law (full disclosure), a South Korean newspaper is reporting that a number of Chinese banks, including China’s largest bank (and the world’s largest, in terms of assets) have frozen the accounts of their North Korean customers. It has been confirmed that some Chinese banks in northeastern China, including the Dandong, Liaoning Province branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country’s largest...
Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
February 18, 2016

What the U.N.’s new North Korea sanctions resolution should (and should not) do.

Yonhap reports that the U.S. and China have made progress toward an agreement on a draft U.N. Security Council resolution. Although we’ve seen few hints about exactly what sanctions China is willing to sign up for — much less enforce — China is paying lip service to the notion that North Korea must pay a “necessary price” for its behavior. Has Xi Jinping relented in his unprecedented stubbornness, or was it always China’s plan to relent after stalling us, in the hope that...
Categories China & Korea/Class Warfare/Diplomacy/Sanctions
February 9, 2016

NYT: How China helped N. Korea buy ski lift cable cars, and break U.N. sanctions

Yesterday, I posted about hunger in North Korea, the fact that Kim Jong-un is spending the nation’s lunch money on missiles and ski resorts, and the importance of helping the North Korean people make that connection though a comprehensive information operations strategy. The New York Times has bolstered the evidence of North Korean and Chinese culpability for this tragedy with a detailed report on North Korea’s purchase of the equipment for its ski resort through China. Previously, NK News revealed that the...
Categories China & Korea/Class Warfare/Luxury Goods
February 7, 2016

Ed Royce’s North Korea sanctions bill is already giving President Obama leverage over China

Kim Jong-un’s Groundhog Day message to the world was the announcement of a long-range missile test, and as you’ve no doubt heard, he has since made good on that threat. Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” this provocation cycle has been a variation on an endless loop. In 2006, 2009, and 2013, the missile test came before the nuke test, but if reports that His Corpulency is preparing yet another nuclear test are true, that will still technically be the case. Otherwise, events have...
Categories China/Diplomacy/Sanctions
January 11, 2016

The biggest loser from North Korea’s nuke test? China. (updated)

When I was in high school, my favorite TV show was “Miami Vice.” Until it jumped the shark in Season Three, I’d count the minutes until each episode began. One of its best episodes was called “Golden Triangle,” in which the show developed the main characters’ boss, Lieutenant Castillo, played by Edward James Olmos in his breakout role. Olmos played Castillo deep and dark. To me, at that age, Castillo personified cool. In this episode, Castillo revealed his past as...
Categories China & Korea
December 15, 2015

Singapore shipper guilty of funding illegal N. Korean arms deal through Bank of China

In 2013, Panamanian authorities seized a huge haul of surplus Cuban weapons, including MiG fighters and surface-to-air missiles, aboard a North Korean ship at the entrance to the Panama Canal. Multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibit North Korea from buying or selling most weapons, so the Cuban stevedores covered the weapons with sacks of sugar. An investigation by the U.N. Panel of Experts found that a North Korean shipper, Ocean Maritime Management (OMM), owned the ship, and that the regrettably named, Singapore-based Chinpo Shipping handled the financial transactions...
Categories China/Money Laundering/Sanctions
November 20, 2015

China arrests 10 N. Korean refugees, including a family with a baby; protest tomorrow at Chinese embassy

A group of North Korean defectors who were being smuggled across the China-Vietnam border have been detained, and are at risk of being repatriated to North Korea. A South Korean government official who spoke to News 1 on the condition of anonymity said 10 defectors in total were taken into custody in the Mong Cai region of northern Vietnam. All have been sent back to China, and 9 of the 10 are at risk of being repatriated to North Korea,...
Categories China/Refugees
November 1, 2015

Sam Pa, 88 Queensway, KKG & Bureau 39: A case study in how China helps N. Korea evade sanctions

Last week, I highlighted Andrea Berger’s excellent post at 38 North, calling for the U.N. Security Council to sanction North Korea’s third-party enablers. Berger named some of those enablers, but I’d like to name another one of the most important ones — the Hong Kong-based 88 Queensway Group, headed by one Sam Pa, also known by his birth name “Xu Jinghua” or any of “at least eight aliases,” each with its own matching passport. According to multiple news reports, Pa has extensive connections to Chinese politicians, and with its intelligence services....
Categories Anju Links/China/Money Laundering/Sanctions
July 23, 2015

That time in 2013 when 100 N. Korean women staged a walkout at a prison uniform factory

Fittingly, our story begins with a Chinese textile company that made prison uniforms. We don’t ordinarily think of Chinese prison-garment workers as overpaid, but then, some North Korean officials paid them a visit. The officials knew of a derelict factory in the extreme northeast of the workers’ paradise, where women would work 12 hours a day for 30 kilograms of rice a month. For the women, this was still a good wage, especially compared to any wage that might be paid in...
Categories China & Korea/Resistance
July 17, 2015

U.N. asks China why it sent 29 refugees, including a 1 year-old baby, to North Korea

The U.N. has requested Beijing for an explanation of its decision to repatriate 29 North Korean defectors last August, and of their current status in North Korea. [….] The U.N. Commission of Inquiry is particularly concerned about the status of human-trafficking victims and illegal immigrants in China, and the persecution or torture, as well as the long detentions that await returnees in North Korea, South Korean outlet No Cut News reported. North Korean women also are vulnerable to forced abortions...
Categories China/Refugees
February 25, 2015

Kim Jong Un seeks friends and funds abroad as he isolates his people.

In the three years that he has been in power, His Porcine Majesty has found plenty of time for Dennis Rodman, but none for meetings with foreign leaders. Suddenly, in the last two months, he has flirted with (1) a summit with South Korean leader Park Geun-Hye, (2) inviting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Pyongyang, (3) and a visit to Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May. His central bank even “committed itself to implementing the action plan of ”˜international standard’ for anti-money laundering and combating...
Categories Capitalism/China & Korea/Class Warfare/Diplomacy/Russia & Korea/Sanctions
December 29, 2014

If S. Korea’s missile defense worries China, just wait till the neighbors start nuking up.

The deployment of ballistic missile defense systems around North Korea by the United States and its allies could be an effective way to change China’s strategic thinking about Pyongyang, a U.S. congressional report said. The Congressional Research Service made the point in a recent report, “North Korea: U.S. Relations, Nuclear Diplomacy, and Internal Situation,” saying Beijing would find it not in its national interest if provocative actions by the North lead to increased military deployments in the region. [Yonhap] Here’s...
Categories China/Proliferation/WMD
December 23, 2014

China to Obama: Drop dead

The best news I’ve heard today is that Sony Pictures has either grown a pair or decided that it would rather wilt under domestic political pressure than wilt under foreign terrorist pressure. That means that some theaters will be showing The Interview on Christmas after all. I won’t stand in line to see it, but when it comes to my neighborhood, I’m taking my son (my daughter might not be old enough). Fortunately, this sounds like exactly the kind of crappy movie that might...
Categories Anju Links/Censorship/China/Cyberwar/Terrorism (NK)