Angry in the Great White North

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.