Sanctions are fine, but what about the Chinese who depend on trade with North Korea?
With Beijing under growing international pressure to impose tougher sanctions on Pyongyang, Chinese traders on the border fear for their future
Su Nan, a trader along the China-North Korea border, used to be a busy man. He used to wake early in the morning, fill his schedule with endless phone calls, and in a good year close deals worth millions of US dollars. But now, all of that has gone.
“We have no revenue so far this year,” Su told This Week in Asia. “In fact, we have been struggling since 2016, with fewer and fewer orders coming.”
Although his company hasn’t lowered his salary or laid off workers, Su said he can’t help but worry. After all, “we just sit in the office and do nothing”, he said.
For cross-border businesses, recent high-level security talks between China and the US in Washington – alongside North Korea’s test-firing last week of an intercontinental ballistic missile – have fuelled even more anxieties.