Search Results for: china

March 8, 2016

China’s compliance with North Korea sanctions, so far: mixed, yet hopeful signs.

As I’ve long argued in these pages, China has a long history of evading and violating the North Korea sanctions it votes for at the U.N. Without the threat of secondary sanctions, it will revert to non-enforcement. When the next U.N. Panel of Experts report is published in the coming days, it will reveal yet more extensive evidence of sanctions violations by Chinese banks, ports, and businesses, often with the knowledge of the government agencies that regulated them. Since early...

Categories Sanctions
March 6, 2016

WaPo editorial: “China’s switch” on N. Korea sanctions “had a lot to do with” H.R. 757.

After the President signed H.R. 757 into law, but before the U.N. Security Council approved resolution 2270, sanctions skeptics predicted that the new U.S. law would complicate diplomatic efforts to get China to enforce U.N. sanctions. Events thus far have refuted that view. After the President signed the new law, China, which had inflexibly opposed new U.N. sanctions for weeks, reversed course and voted for the strongest North Korea sanctions resolution so far. Even before China’s official retreat, China’s banks had already begun to freeze...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions
February 24, 2016

Hey, China, let’s make a deal about North Korea. You’re going to love it.

Good morning, Vice-Minister Chen. I hope you enjoyed sampling our great country’s authentic cuisine at lunch today. If not, I keep a bottle of Pepto in my desk. As you know, the new Trump Administration is all about cutting government spending, although we know how to invest, too. The neon signage and gold-leaf bathroom fixtures have been a yuuge morale boost here at Foggy Bottom. And yes, those are real diamonds on my pinkie ring. That was my annual bonus...

Categories China/Diplomacy/Humor/Satire
February 21, 2016

China’s largest bank freezes North Korean accounts

Not even a week after President Obama signed the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act into law (full disclosure), a South Korean newspaper is reporting that a number of Chinese banks, including China’s largest bank (and the world’s largest, in terms of assets) have frozen the accounts of their North Korean customers. It has been confirmed that some Chinese banks in northeastern China, including the Dandong, Liaoning Province branch of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the country’s largest...

Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
February 9, 2016

NYT: How China helped N. Korea buy ski lift cable cars, and break U.N. sanctions

Yesterday, I posted about hunger in North Korea, the fact that Kim Jong-un is spending the nation’s lunch money on missiles and ski resorts, and the importance of helping the North Korean people make that connection though a comprehensive information operations strategy. The New York Times has bolstered the evidence of North Korean and Chinese culpability for this tragedy with a detailed report on North Korea’s purchase of the equipment for its ski resort through China. Previously, NK News revealed that the...

Categories China & Korea/Class Warfare/Luxury Goods
February 7, 2016

Ed Royce’s North Korea sanctions bill is already giving President Obama leverage over China

Kim Jong-un’s Groundhog Day message to the world was the announcement of a long-range missile test, and as you’ve no doubt heard, he has since made good on that threat. Like the movie “Groundhog Day,” this provocation cycle has been a variation on an endless loop. In 2006, 2009, and 2013, the missile test came before the nuke test, but if reports that His Corpulency is preparing yet another nuclear test are true, that will still technically be the case. Otherwise, events have...

Categories China/Diplomacy/Sanctions
January 11, 2016

The biggest loser from North Korea’s nuke test? China. (updated)

When I was in high school, my favorite TV show was “Miami Vice.” Until it jumped the shark in Season Three, I’d count the minutes until each episode began. One of its best episodes was called “Golden Triangle,” in which the show developed the main characters’ boss, Lieutenant Castillo, played by Edward James Olmos in his breakout role. Olmos played Castillo deep and dark. To me, at that age, Castillo personified cool. In this episode, Castillo revealed his past as...

Categories China & Korea
December 15, 2015

Singapore shipper guilty of funding illegal N. Korean arms deal through Bank of China

In 2013, Panamanian authorities seized a huge haul of surplus Cuban weapons, including MiG fighters and surface-to-air missiles, aboard a North Korean ship at the entrance to the Panama Canal. Multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibit North Korea from buying or selling most weapons, so the Cuban stevedores covered the weapons with sacks of sugar. An investigation by the U.N. Panel of Experts found that a North Korean shipper, Ocean Maritime Management (OMM), owned the ship, and that the regrettably named, Singapore-based Chinpo Shipping handled the financial transactions...

Categories China/Money Laundering/Sanctions
December 11, 2015

At the U.N., China shields Kim Jong-Un from prosecution, but not isolation (updates)

In February, two years will have passed since the U.N. Commission of Inquiry released its historic report on human rights in North Korea, finding “human rights abuses on a scale ‘without parallel in the contemporary world,’ comparable to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.” The bad news is that we’re still just talking about this. The good news is that America, and most of the world, are uniting around the importance of holding Kim Jong-Un accountable for those crimes. [Samantha Power addresses the...

Categories "United" Nations/Human Rights
November 20, 2015

China arrests 10 N. Korean refugees, including a family with a baby; protest tomorrow at Chinese embassy

A group of North Korean defectors who were being smuggled across the China-Vietnam border have been detained, and are at risk of being repatriated to North Korea. A South Korean government official who spoke to News 1 on the condition of anonymity said 10 defectors in total were taken into custody in the Mong Cai region of northern Vietnam. All have been sent back to China, and 9 of the 10 are at risk of being repatriated to North Korea,...

Categories China/Refugees
November 3, 2015

China helps N. Korea nuke up & break sanctions, then says sanctions don’t work.

Two weeks ago, the Obama Administration’s point man on North Korea policy told Congress that sanctions are hurting Pyongyang. I must confess to some skepticism. [Ski lift made in China.] Instead, the evidence suggests that North Korea’s rich are getting richer, and its poor are staying poor. Materially speaking, the capital’s elites have never had it better, and openly buy imported consumer goods with dollars. Marcus Noland also sees evidence that, whatever the official statistics tell us, Pyongyang’s palace economy...

Categories Anju Links
November 1, 2015

Sam Pa, 88 Queensway, KKG & Bureau 39: A case study in how China helps N. Korea evade sanctions

Last week, I highlighted Andrea Berger’s excellent post at 38 North, calling for the U.N. Security Council to sanction North Korea’s third-party enablers. Berger named some of those enablers, but I’d like to name another one of the most important ones — the Hong Kong-based 88 Queensway Group, headed by one Sam Pa, also known by his birth name “Xu Jinghua” or any of “at least eight aliases,” each with its own matching passport. According to multiple news reports, Pa has extensive connections to Chinese politicians, and with its intelligence services....

Categories Anju Links/China/Money Laundering/Sanctions
September 21, 2015

Arsenal of Terror, 2d Ed.: China arrests N. Korean kidnap squad

To count as terrorism, an act must be (1) violent, (2) unlawful in the place where it’s committed, (3) carried out by clandestine agents or subnational groups, and (4) with the intent to coerce a government or a civilian population. To be international terrorism, an act of terrorism must also (5) involve the citizens or territory of more than one country. If this report is confirmed, it would appear to meet the definition: Several North Korean agents were caught by Chinese police in March...

Categories Terrorism (NK)
July 24, 2015

Treasury designates Singaporean shipping company for N. Korea weapons trade, but what about the Bank of China?

More than two years after the North Korean merchant vessel Chong Chon Gang was caught trying to sneak a shipment of Cuban MiGs and missiles through the Panama canal hidden under 200,000 sacks of sugar, the Treasury Department has, slowly and slightly, expanded its sanctions against the shipping companies involved in the incident. Yesterday afternoon, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated Singapore-based Senat Shipping and its Director, Leonard Lai a/k/a Yong Chian Lai, a Singaporean national. It also blocked...

Categories Money Laundering/Sanctions
July 17, 2015

U.N. asks China why it sent 29 refugees, including a 1 year-old baby, to North Korea

The U.N. has requested Beijing for an explanation of its decision to repatriate 29 North Korean defectors last August, and of their current status in North Korea. [….] The U.N. Commission of Inquiry is particularly concerned about the status of human-trafficking victims and illegal immigrants in China, and the persecution or torture, as well as the long detentions that await returnees in North Korea, South Korean outlet No Cut News reported. North Korean women also are vulnerable to forced abortions...

Categories China/Refugees
January 13, 2015

House Foreign Affairs Committee holds briefing; members demand tougher sanctions on N. Korea, China (updated with video of full hearing)

The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a briefing on North Korea and the Sony hack today. Three witnesses appeared: The Honorable Sung Kim Special Representative for North Korea Policy and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Korea and Japan U.S. Department of State [full text of statement] The Honorable Daniel Glaser Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence U.S. Department of the Treasury [full text of statement] Brigadier General Gregory J. Touhill, USAF, Retired Deputy Assistant Secretary for...

Categories Anju Links