China Can Do More Than Stop Buying Coal to Squeeze Pyongyang
- Exports from China include fuel, soybean oil and fertilizers
- China seen wanting to avoid destabilizing North Korean regime
A woman stretches below the China-North Korea Friendship Bridge and the Broken Bridge in Dandong, China.
Photographer: Greg Baker/AFP via Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
If China really wanted to pressure North Korea, it could go a lot further than a ban on buying the isolated country’s coal.
Fuel and commodity exports to North Korea, worth at least about $450 million last year, may be more vital to Kim Jong Un’s regime than the cash it will lose after Beijing pledged on Saturday to halt coal imports. Despite pressure from the U.S, it’s unlikely China will clamp down on the trade it views as livelihood assistance because that would risk destabilizing its neighbor, according to Jonathan Berkshire Miller, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.