05 billion identified between the two Koreas

On the margins of the crisis current diplomatic (read also page 14), the Chinese Government began a long economic battle to prevent any new weakening of the North Korean dictatorship. Fearing a collapse political and financial of the Pyongyang regime which could ultimately lead to a reconciliation of the two Koreas and a massive influx on its border with us troops currently based in the South of the peninsula Beijing supports arm's lean growth of the country of Kim Jong-il and seeks to slowly evolve.

Over the past five years, China is thus imposed as the principal economic North Korea's partner. It would make it now more than 80 of its goods and would, according to the statistics of the promotion agency (Kotra) Korea investments, insured, last year, 52 of all of its bilateral trade. In his last report, the institution, based in Seoul, believes that exchanges between the Korea of the North and China have increased 14 over one year to reach, last year, $ 1.6 billion, exceeding the 1.05 billion identified between the two Koreas.

If the China provides important deliveries of food and energy to the authorities in Pyongyang, which experienced several outbreaks of famine by almost 2 million deaths in the 1990s, the Government encourages also the businessmen from the assault of a territory almost Virgin of foreign investment. Taking advantage of low wages ($ 50 per month for a worker) and tax incentives proposed by Pyongyang (a corporate tax between 10 and 14 in the Kaesong industrial complex), they are making in their bicycle factories, glass and even computers. More and more shops and restaurants are also controlled by Chinese and more of en plus de capital de plus en plus dans commerces et de restaurants sont également contrôlés par des capitaux chinois en plus de sont par des en plus de sont sont par des en plus de par des par des en plus de en plus de in addition to en plus de en plus de Last October, it is the Chinese group Zhejiang Yunyang Guohui Trading Co. which has obtained the right to reopen the largest store of Pyongyang, presented as the first centre of consumption in the West.

Educational tours

Not forgetting the appetite of Chinese growth in raw materials, large groups interested in the significant resources in ores of Korean basement (huge reserves of magnesite and iron). Chinese Minmetals Corp. would be in talks with the South Korean Kores to operate 2 sites in the North of the country containing more than 3 billion tons of iron ore.

"To facilitate trade, China has increased investment in infrastructure along its border with the Korea of the North", points the International Crisis Group in its recent study "China and North Korea: Comrades Forever." Beijing would thus earned the right to upgrade and use for 50 years the port of Najin and negotiated the construction of a motorway from 60 kilometres between the port and the border city of Hunchun, which could ultimately transit much of Chinese products to the Japan and South Korea.

"While eroding the centralism of the economy, these Chinese investments reduce the ability of the North Korean Government to restrict the flow of people, goods and information." "Chinese groups at the same time provide an experience of basic capitalism", yet note the Group of experts.

If China tries to fuel the growth of its fragile neighbor to prevent any collapse of the North Korean Government, it has not abandoned to see the current system. Hoping to push the regime to the route of reform, Beijing has organized several educational stays for Kim Jong-il and his relatives. The dictator so visited, last January, the special economic zones of the rich province of Guangdong, where the Chinese Communist Party had tested, twenty years ago, his first concessions to capitalism.