Risky Business

Is Trump willing to anger Beijing and go after the Chinese companies supplying North Korea’s nuclear program?

 

- Bill Powell

The city of Dandong, in China’s northeastern Liaoning province, appears to be an embarrassing relic of the country’s economic past. Old, run-down state-owned factories sit on the outskirts of a town full of dreary office buildings. There is none of the flash and glitz so prevalent in China’s far more prosperous cities.

But Dandong is nevertheless one of the most important cities in China, because it sits just across the border from North Korea and is Pyongyang’s economic lifeline. Nearly 85 percent of North Korea’s global trade is with China, and much of that flows through Dandong. That includes the machinery, purchased in contravention of both U.S. and U.N. sanctions, needed to build nuclear weapons, as well as the missiles needed to deliver them. And, crucially, Dandong is also the source of the offshore financing from Chinese banks that Pyongyang needs to pay for its illicit weapons program.

That program took yet another step forward on July 4, America’s Independence Day, when Pyongyang successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Alaska. This latest in-your-face provocation from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un came after President Donald Trump had signaled that his strategy for reining in the North—relying on China to use its clout with the Pyongyang regime—had failed. “At least we know China tried,” Trump tweeted on June 20.