Japan holds the key to compelling China to be firm with North Korea
Japan has the power to prod the Chinese into doing what needs to be done to bring North Korea under control. That is because of a little known deal with the North Korean port of Rajin to act as a trans-shipment hub moving Chinese goods to Japan. If Japan maintains a ban on North Korean shipping, Chinese profits will suffer, and there lies the leverage needed to get China on board.
From the BBC:
Japan is to impose tough new sanctions against North Korea in response to its claimed nuclear test.
The new measures will include banning all North Korean imports and stopping its ships entering Japanese waters, a government spokesman said.
What isn't explained in the BBC report is just how signficant this really is. North Korea is seen as a nation with no legitimate exports (the BBC mentions trade in mushrooms, for example). But it does act as a major link in China's export system. From a report dated November 2005:
China's industrial northeast has historically been one of the engine rooms of the country's manufacturing powerbase. Struggling through the transition from a planned, communist style economy to one governed by market forces, the area was dominated by state owned heavy industry and given the unflattering moniker of the "Rust Belt."
As new technology made some of the bigger plants obsolete, the region lost its edge as an industrial base. But two years ago, the government set about giving the area a new coat of paint with its "Revitalize the Northeast" campaign aimed at bringing the area up to speed with the rest of modern China. Now, a unique deal with one of the world's most reclusive countries could bring fresh prosperity to the region. A radical alteration to the supply chain in the Northeast, in the shape of a 50-year lease on the North Korean port of Rajin, will slash transport distances and costs to the lucrative Japanese market.
The Northeast suffers from a logistics problem due to the fact that two of the three provinces that make up the region . Jilin and Heilongjiang are landlocked, making exporting goods more difficult. Shipments bound for Japan must travel all the way by road or rail and then sail around the Korean Peninsula before reaching the Land of the Rising Sun.
According to Korean and Chinese news sources, the new deal was signed in September and will see the Chinese border city of Hunchun, which lies about 80 kilometers inland on the Tumen River, have exclusive rights to access Rajin port for the next 50 years. China will also establish a 5-10 square kilometer industrial zone in the North Korean city and construct a 67-kilometer highway linking Rajin to Hunchun. Additionally, North Korean officials agreed to an investment deal along with the port deal, which their Jilin provincial government counterparts signed to ease cross-border trade.
You know that there will be a lot of jockeying in Beijing as officials who have invested heavily in the Rajin project are going to be pulling out all the stops to keep their own government from imposing sanctions that will affect Rajin (and the profits to be made). But there is precious little that can be done to affect Japan's policy, especially when it comes to matters relating to nuclear weapons. If the Japanese enforce this ban on North Korean shipping, Rajin's value as a port will shrivel to nothing, ultimately hurting Chinese interests.
This might help understand China's relatively strong reaction to the North Korean nuclear test. Japan is the key. Japan has the power to strangle North Korea's value as a trans-shipment point, and so hurt the Chinese. That will give China the reason it needs to make a serious move on North Korea to resolve the crisis.
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Comments
How do you say, "Hoist by my own petard" in Mandarin?
Posted by: neo at October 11, 2006 12:07 PM
Whether Japan holds a key or not (Good observation, though), do you really think that NK will cease its nuke program, and most importantly, allow unfettered access to everywhere for Western inspectors?
Yeah, right...
China could very well force Kim to make all sorts of announcements, but the genie is out of the bottle now, and seeing it go back would be critical.
I just can't imagine a gaggle of Hans Blix types wandering freely around NK, do you? Maybe I lack imagination...
;)
Posted by: Mad Mike at October 11, 2006 12:21 PM
Yeah.. Hans Blix running around while a Liberal government here insists we remain neutral...
Posted by: at October 11, 2006 01:29 PM
Why don't we sic Israel on NK? Now that's a battle I could support.
Posted by: Real Conservative at October 11, 2006 02:49 PM
Hans Blix types walking about *checking* in NK would likely end up *checked out*, their bodies lying in the street along side the expired starved. = TG
Posted by: TonyGuitar at October 11, 2006 02:54 PM
Or floating in a shark tank somewhere...
Posted by: RL at October 11, 2006 07:52 PM
One interesting factor that is not acknowledged in this post is that South Korean has a very very very large population that believe in a true and living God who can answer prayers. And they are praying concerning this problem (North Korea). It will be very interesting to see if there is an answer (supernaturally speaking that is)
Posted by: Canadian Pill in Japan at October 11, 2006 11:39 PM
Don*t look now, but Russia is fast morphing into a North Korea No. 2.
Things are so damn fast moving. Listening to a Russia expert this morning one realizes how uninformed about recent Russian changes we can be.
The recent contract killing of a feisty journalist in her home apartment building elevator is supposed to be about number twelve on the recently executed list.
Well, excuse me. That*s the short list. There have been over 200 journalists snuffed contract style and it seems Putin is getting his message of, * just don*t write anything critical* across to journalists anyway.
Said well traveled in Russia, commentor, with heavy accent, also mentioned that citizens have less and less access to unbiased news. [Hello CBC, what*s new, except for the odd free-flow interview, like this one]. Guess you notice how the first half of every CBC and CTV news cast is taken up with soldiers lost in Afghanistan. An hourly anti-Harper harping. I*m tired of it!
As ex-Navy, I have every sympathy for the families losses, however it is an embarrassment that the CBC does so much weeping on our behalf. Anti-Harper Crocodile tears.
Our man from Russia mentioned that he and millions of retired like him get pensions of about $80 a month. He wonders how his countrymen manage to keep from starving.
Yet, paradoxically, he says there is hope for truth through the internet. Says there are 20 million on the net in Russia. Now I have serious reservations about that number. Maybe more like 20 thousand.
The important point is that 7000 people attended the funeral of our latest journalist of truth. The vast majority of Russians do want freedom and democracy, but like North Korea, they are being confined and made prisoner with the old reliable whip, the government bullet.
First the Mafia made real strides in Russia in the early nineties and without limitation the rot spread to bureaucrats galore. The estimated budget of organized crime was about 340 Billion$ and that is approximately double the Russian economy.
Today the population is held captive much as they are in North Korea. The marketplace is extreme capitalism in a black-market trading sense as everyone must scramble to make ends meet. Because most people are so pressed, they tend to have little time to become better informed about how things are changing for the worse in their own country.
Hotel complexes are hi-jacked and in our case, a deposessed Canadian developer has a lawsuit to regain his 14 million$ but Russian authority is doing nothing to help render any justice.
Billion$ are being siphoned to Russian servers through internet crime and there is no Russian will to cooperate with any free-world authority at all.
Usually upbeat, I am unable to see much silver lining in Russia these days. = TG
Posted by: TonyGuitar at October 15, 2006 04:35 PM
 
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