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Bridge over troubled water...
By Li Xiaokun,Wang Huazhong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-05 08:18 * Many businessmen and women involved in DPRK trade in Dandong told China Daily they were pessimistic about the future.
Sitting on a cardboard box outside the customs building in Dandong, a major city in northeast China's Liaoning province, Xu shielded her eyes from the scorching midday sun and sighed. She had been staring across the border to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) for hours, hoping for the sight of an oncoming truck. Xu is a smuggler. For the past seven years, she has fed her family by helping clients sneak food, clothing and various other basic supplies across the border to the DPRK, the land of her birth. It is a small operation and one of the many that exploit the city's position as a main point of trade between China and its reclusive neighbor, which over the years has relied heavily on the relationship to survive.
"Business used to be very good but we have suffered a lot recently because of a serious decline in trade," explained Xu, who is in her 40s and refused to give her full name due to the sensitivity of her profession. Xu, along with her husband and son, were able to flee the DPRK in 1990 after telling officials they planned to visit relatives in Dandong. They have never returned and, as the couple were both children of overseas Chinese, they successfully applied for permanent residential permits after five years. On an average day, Xu would receive a call from a client in the DPRK with a list of items, from washing powder to television sets. She would then buy the goods and liaises with DPRK truck drivers, who concealed the contraband cargo before heading back across the border, marked by the Yalu River and 66-year-old "Grand Bridge of Sino-DPRK Friendship". "Last year, I earned 100,000 yuan ($15,000)," said Xu, boasting a figure more than 10 times the official average income of an urban Dandong resident. "But fewer and fewer trucks are coming to China. Now I make just 213 yuan a day and only made 20,000 yuan during the first half of this year." Xu's story is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Dandong Federal Business Corp Chairman Shan Jie, who said: "Most of the nearly 1,000 legal enterprises involved in border trade here have stopped operations." Shan, who has run the corporation for 16 years, said he has forged close relations with officials in Pyongyang, the capital of the DPRK, with turnover hitting a peak of $6 million in 2000. "Political events like the first nuclear test back in 2006 had limited impact on our company," he said. "But our business has hit rock bottom since the May test. We agreed 17 deals worth 3 million yuan with Pyongyang in April, but so far only one of them has materialized. "We are under a great deal of pressure, but at least we have one deal going. Many other firms have no deals, no income and are desperate." Xu Ziyun, who works for Hantong International Forwarding Agent, one of the largest trading companies in Dandong, agreed that the amount of cargo crossing the border was shrinking fast. "Before the nuclear test in May, more than 100 trucks were checked by Chinese customs officers every day. At the peak, our company alone sent 129 vehicles to the DPRK daily. But now only about 30 trucks from each side are crossing," he said. The fate of Dandong has for decades been inextricably linked with its mysterious neighbor. In 1950, when the city was called Andong, it became a household name when the Chinese army of volunteers marched across the bridge over the Yalu River to fight in the Korean War.
The many Chinese parents who named their children Andong assured its place in history, while today China's northernmost port city is where more than half of all Sino-DPRK trade is conducted. International trade became the city's economic pillar in the 1990s following the collapse of light industry amid the reform of the State-owned enterprises. Transactions with the DPRK accounted for 80 percent of its foreign trade last year, said the Dandong Customs Bureau. "Dandong's trade with Japan and Republic of Korea (ROK) has also been severely hit by the financial crisis," said Shan. "If the situation continues, the city will be trapped in the mire." In Yanji, a city further north along the border in the neighboring province of Jilin, the economic climate is also gloomy. A local businessman was quoted in the Los Angeles Times last month as saying this year had been the hardest of his 10-year career trading with the DPRK. |
