Search Results for: china

October 12, 2010

China’s Cleansing Campaign

I want to begin this post by congratulating the Nobel Committee for awarding the Peace Prize, for once, to a person who has actually made sacrifices to improve the lives of others in a way that is likely to frustrate a belligerent state and prevent war. More precisely, by selecting someone who is not a terrorist, an unaccomplished politician, or a proven failure at making peace, Nobel may have extended its residual relevance a while longer. Better, it has returned...

Categories Uncategorized
August 5, 2010

Plan B Watch: Einhorn Goes to Tokyo, Pressure Builds on China

The latest reports in the Korean press tell us that the President will soon sign an over-arching executive order that will subsume the authorities of Executive Order 13,382 (see sidebars), and will also allow the blocking of assets used for proliferation, drug trafficking, and currency counterfeiting: In a press briefing on Monday, Department spokesman Philip Crowley said, “We have no doubt that North Korea has engaged directly in counterfeit operations as a means of bringing currency into the country. This...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Crime/NK Economics/Proliferation/Sanctions
August 2, 2010

Plan B Watch: Robert Einhorn Visits Seoul; State Directs Strong Criticism at China

Robert Einhorn, President Obama’s special adviser for non-proliferation and arms control, is visiting Seoul and Tokyo this week. He is accompanied by Daniel Glaser, who works with Treasury’s Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and who was a key architect of the Banco Delta Asia sanctions in 2005 and 2006. At the risk of making a comparison that Glaser might not necessarily welcome, his presence in Seoul has far more deterrent value than parking an aircraft carrier off the coast...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions
July 28, 2010

Plan B Watch: A Shot Across China’s Bow?

Hey, did the State Department threaten the Bank of China and the Bank of Shanghai? Or to put the question more bluntly, did someone just grow a pair? A diplomatic source here said the U.S. will blacklist more North Korean entities and individuals in the coming weeks so that international financial institutions would cut off ties with them. Any foreign banks refusing to sever business ties with the North Korean entities and individuals in question will have U.S. financial institutions...

Categories China/China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/Sanctions/U.S. Law
July 21, 2010

Will a North Korean Attack Win the Yellow Sea for China?

Is the Yellow Sea a Chinese lake? Under ordinary circumstances, I’d understand China’s complaints about a U.S. naval exercise in an inland sea near its shores. It’s not as if I’d want Chinese ships in the Gulf of Mexico, either, but these are not ordinary circumstances. This time, North Korea has sunk a South Korean warship, and China has both shielded North Korea from any consequences for that attack and continued to provide necessary financial support to the regime that...

Categories China/China & Korea
July 12, 2010

China’s North Korean Puppet Is Getting Away With Murder … Again (Updated, Bumped)

[Update 12 Jul 2010: I’ve located the full text of the Presidential Statement, and contrary to reports I linked below, it does use the word “attack.” It takes note of “the findings of the Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group led by the ROK with the participation of five nations, which concluded that the DPRK was responsible for sinking the Cheonan” before noting North Korea’s denial. But because the statement is completely toothless, none of this was terribly upsetting to the North...

Categories "United" Nations/Cheonan Incident/China & Korea
June 30, 2010

China, Korea, and the Persistence of Mendacity

It’s nice to see Koreans calling China on its P.R. blunders with greater frequency these days: In its feature on the 60th anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War, the International Herald Leader, a newsweekly of the Xinhua News Agency, said the North Korean army launched the war by crossing the 38th parallel and seizing South Korean capital Seoul in three days. The article immediately drew attention, with some placing significance on China’s first admission of military aggression...

Categories China & Korea/Korean War
June 30, 2010

North Korea’s Money Men in China

It’s a few days old, but this Daily NK piece is a fascinating insight into how North Korea’s state trading companies put revenue in Kim Jong Il’s coffers, how they’re adapting to the politics of succession: Ri, who is in his mid-40s and living in Dalian, says he enjoys extravagance which he could never have imagined in North Korea. “The Cheonan incident and other issues are complicated,” he explains, “I now believe here (China) is my hometown and where I...

Categories China & Korea/Kim Jong Un/NK Economics
June 28, 2010

You Say That Like It’s a Bad Thing: “China Hand” Fears Treasury Sanctions

I’m apparently not the only one who cocked an eyebrow at the refusal of a State Department spokesman recently to rule out applying new sanctions to be directed at North Korea to third-country entities. The United States Wednesday did not preclude the possibility of freezing North Korean assets in foreign banks to effectively cut off resources for the North’s development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. “I’m not going to predict any particular step that we’re contemplating, but these...

Categories China & Korea/Counterfeiting/Fiskings/Money Laundering/Sanctions
June 9, 2010

At Last, China Regrets June 4th Shootings!

And obviously, I refer to the killings of three Chinese citizens and the wounding of a fourth by North Korean border guards: Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang, briefing reporters in Beijing, said the shooting incident occurred in the early morning hours of June 4, around the northeastern town of Dandong, when the Chinese civilians crossed into North Korea to engage in illicit trading, common along the 880-mile border. South Korean and Japanese media reported that the Chinese were in a...

Categories China & Korea/Drugs & N Korea
June 7, 2010

China’s Support for Kim Jong Il Undermines the U.N., Nonproliferation, and Regional Peace

Some of us, of course, have never really believed that the United Nations could play much of a useful role in restraining North Korea anyway, other than helping us enlist the support of Old Europe, which is almost alone in paying any heed to the U.N. After all, the institution is led by Ban Ki-Moon, who rose from local obscurity to international obscurity by appeasing Kim Jong Il, and who, by all outward appearances, suffers from a genetic testosterone deficiency....

Categories "United" Nations/Cheonan Incident/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Proliferation/Sanctions
May 4, 2010

Prediction: U.N. Resolutions, Cheonan Sinking Won’t Change China’s Support for Kim Jong Il

What will the Chinese ask Kim Jong Il during his visit? South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, was in China as well last week, meeting with Hu on Friday to solicit support if his country sought stronger U.N. sanctions in retaliation for the Cheonan attack. “China wants to hear North Korea’s explanation so it can determine its position,” said Yang Moo-jin, professor at the University of North Korean Studies. China has been taking a more active role recently in mediating North...

Categories China & Korea
May 3, 2010

Kim Jong Il in China, Says Yonhap

The dead of the Cheonan haven’t been in the ground for a week, but the man who probably ordered their deaths is still a welcome and honored guest in Beijing: “We have confirmed the arrival of a special train at (the Chinese border city) Dandong, and we believe it is highly likely that Chairman Kim is on board,” a South Korean government official told Yonhap. [L.A. Times] The last such report turned out to be a false alarm. Recall that...

Categories China & Korea/Kim Jong Il
April 15, 2010

China Helps North Korea Import Infant Formula New Cars Despite U.N. Sanctions

I dedicate this post to John Feffer and Christine Ahn, who may now rest in the security of knowing that U.N. anti-proliferation sanctions aren’t causing starvation in North Korea: Around 100 Chinese-made cars have been brought into North Korea through a checkpoint on the border with China, probably for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to give to favored officials. The delivery was made on Tuesday, two days before former leader Kim Il-sung’s birthday, which is the biggest holiday in the...

Categories China & Korea/Sanctions
April 9, 2010

North Korea and China Feast Amid Famine

As the food situation in North Korea continues to deteriorate for its most vulnerable, a South Korean NGO is sending 300 tons of flour and other supplies to help feed 12,000 “marginalized” people, including kids in 50 orphanages. The article mentions nothing about monitoring or nutritional surveys, so pray to a God they can’t that there will be a few dollops of gruel left for their begging bowls after all of the theft, diversion, and corruption. Note, by the way,...

Categories Appeasement/China & Korea/Famine & Food Aid/Six-Party Talks
April 4, 2010

4 April 2010: Kim Jong Il in China; More Tension Along the DMZ

Sounds like the perfect time for a coup: Kim Jong Il, and possibly his son Jong-Eun, are rumored to be in China. ______________________________ North Korea has accused South Korean soldiers of firing on a police post on the North Korean side of the DMZ. ______________________________ Vitit Muntarbhorn calls for the U.N. to set up a commission of inquiry into North Korea’s crimes against humanity. If only someone at the U.N. really understood and cared about the history, suffering, and han...

Categories Anju Links
March 20, 2010

Rumor: U.S., China Planning for “Upheaval” in N. Korea

The United States Thursday denied reports that it will soon have closed-door discussions with South Korea and China on plans for upheaval in North Korea. “I have not been told we are going to have this type of meeting at this particular point,” a senior State Department official said, asking not to be named. “If we are working on that in sort of an early stage, that could be possible.” [Yonhap] Normally, I’d be tempted to believe this because they...

Categories China/Reconstruction/Regime Change/U.S. Military
February 16, 2010

China Will Give Kim Jong Il $10 Billion, Violating the Spirit and Letter of U.N. Security Council Resolutions It Voted For

[Update: More here, at the Daily NK] Consistent with reports I’d linked previously, China is now offering a financially beleaguered Kim Jong Il a massive bailout, in obvious retaliation for America’s assistance in helping Taiwan to defend itself against the Chicom missiles aimed at its cities, and likely also as a way to bail Kim Jong Il out after the self-inflicted catastrophe of The Great Confiscation. China’s decision factors in the assumption that America lacks the spine to respond by...

Categories "United" Nations/China & Korea/Sanctions