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North Korea: cargo ships tracked in Chinese waters after UN imposes all-ports ban for violating sanctions

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The UN Security Council has banned all nations from allowing four ships that transported prohibited goods to and from North Korea to enter any port in their country. Hugh Griffiths, head of the panel of experts investigating the implementation of UN sanctions against North Korea, announced the port bans at a briefing to UN member states on Monday. Griffiths later told several reporters that “this is the first time in UN history”. He identified the four cargo ships as the Petrel 8, Hao Fan 6, Tong San 2 and Jie Shun. According to MarineTraffic, a maritime database that monitors vessels and their moments, Petrel 8 is registered in Comoros, Hao Fan 6 in St Kitts and Nevis, and Tong San 2 in North Korea. It does not list the flag of Tong San 2 but said that on October 3 it was in the Bohai Sea off north China. Griffiths said the four ships were officially listed on October 5 “for transporting prohibited goods”, stressing that this was “swift action” by the sanctions committee following the August 6 Security Council resolution that authorised port bans. Griffiths told UN diplomats that: “is continuing its attempts to export coal” in violation of UN sanctions.

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Kim Jong Un promotes his sister to center of leadership

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Amid claims of U.S.-led assassination attempts on the North Korean leader, the reclusive nation’s administration is now looking at consolidating power. Kim Jong Un on Sunday, elevated his younger sister Kim Kyung Hui to the powerful political bureau of the ruling Workers’ Party. The promotion moves her closer to the center of the leadership, as the North Korean dictator advances towards consolidating his family’s control over North Korea. The move also comes two days before the North Korean regime celebrates the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party, through which the Kim family controls the country. Kim Jong Un, who is chairman of the party among the other titles he holds, said that North Korea’s nuclear weapons are necessary “for defending the destiny and sovereignty of the country from the protracted nuclear threats of the U.S. imperialists” Michael Madden, an expert on the Kim family who runs the North Korea Leadership Watch blog, thinks that Kim Jong Un might be positioning his sister as the next heir to the family dynasty.

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China’s central bank chief makes reform appeal: please free up the yuan

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China must press on with a “trinity” of reforms to fully realise an open economy, Zhou Xiaochuan, the country’s central bank chief for the last decade-and-a-half, told influential financial magazine Caijing in what could be one of his last major interviews in the top job. Zhou, governor of the People’s Bank of China, said China must embrace free trade and investment, let the market decide the yuan’s value, and scrap capital account controls. Zhou said China’s position in the global economy was the result of a combination of the three liberalisations. At 69, Zhou has designed and promoted a series of economic liberalisations over the last 15 years, including freeing up interest rates at home and earning the yuan a nominal international reserve currency status abroad. Zhou also said China has been trying to find a new way to balance its trilemma, that it can only choose two of the three goals of free capital outflow, an independent monetary policy and a stable exchange rate. Zhou said: “In my understanding, central bank independence doesn’t mean independence from the government. In fact, it means an independent and effective monetary policy”. Zhou said China’s opening could only move forward through the “ratcheting effect”, a reference to the difficulty of reversal once certain events have happened.

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China and Russia urge restraint after new round of Trump tweets on North Korea

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Russia and China called for restraint on North Korea on Monday after US President Donald Trump warned over the weekend that “only one thing will work” in dealing with Pyongyang, hinting that military action was on his mind. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call: “Moscow has called and continues to call on the parties involved in the conflict and on those who have anything to do with this issue to exercise restraint and to avoid any steps that would only worsen the situation”. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying repeated China’s position that all parties exercise restraint, describing the situation as extremely complex and serious. China hopes all sides do nothing to irritate each other or worsen the problem and speak and act cautiously, she told a daily news briefing. On Saturday, Trump made a similar comment on Twitter about how negotiations have failed for 25 years and said “only one thing will work” with North Korea. Jim Mattis on Monday told the US Army to be ready with military options on North Korea: “There is one thing the US Army can do and that is you have got to be ready to ensure that we have military options that our President can employ if needed. Mattis add: “We currently are in a diplomatically led effort and how many times have you seen the UN Security Council vote unanimously, now twice in a row, to impose stronger sanctions on North Korea”.

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Chinese authorities crack down on North Korean smuggling with checkpoints

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Chinese authorities have set up strict checkpoints near the border regions with North Korea in Liaoning Province, Dandong City, including the mobilization of military dogs. This latest measure appears to be the Chinese government’s attempt to close down smuggling routes that have provided holes in the international sanction campaign against the North Korean regime. According to a North Korean source with knowledge of the issue, Chinese frontier public security officers in military garb are enforcing thorough inspections and crackdowns on smuggling from the Hwanggumpyong Island area to the Yalu River Estuary near Donggang. A Dandong-based source added, “this is the first time we have seen military dogs in the Yalu River area. It looks as if the authorities are intending to crackdown on the vibrant drug trade and other smuggled items that flows through the region”. Daily NK recently reported that many North Korean defectors were boarding smuggling vessels that crossed from Sinuiju City, North Pyongan Province, North Korea across the Yalu River to China. “China is responding sensitively because the world is watching how it deals with North Korean smuggling and defectors”, the Dandong-based source said. “The checkpoints and inspections are aimed at blocking smugglers and defectors, which does not come as good news for North Korean residents”.

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US business groups claim WTO rules cannot stop unfair Chinese trade tactics

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US business groups expressed frustration on Wednesday with what they said are China’s efforts to tilt the economic playing field in favour of domestic companies, adding that World Trade Organisation rules are insufficient to police all of Beijing’s trade practises. US companies face increasing threats from Chinese investment rules, industrial policies, subsidies to state-owned enterprises, excess manufacturing capacity, cybersecurity regulations and forced technology transfers, the groups told a public hearing held by the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office. Josh Kallmer, senior vice-president of global policy at the Information Technology Industry Council, said China had woven a “tapestry” of rules and policies that places foreign companies at a disadvantage and incentivises the transfer of technology. “It just in general puts a thumb on the competitive scale in a way that significantly and profoundly affects US-based and foreign companies”, said Kallmer, who was representing a coalition of technology groups from semiconductors to software. Jeremie Waterman, the US Chamber of Commerce’s vice-president for Greater China, said China’s restrictive investment regime and other industrial policies requiring technology transfers in recent years have made China a less attractive place to invest for foreign firms, and not all of these policies can be changed with full WTO compliance. This has been made worse by China’s “Made in China 2025” plan, which aims to supplant foreign products and technologies with domestic ones and new cybersecurity regulations that put foreign information technology products at a disadvantage, Waterman said. “The ballast has become less stable in recent years” in the US-China economic relationship, he added.

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CIA believes Kim Jong Un is a very rational actor

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Despite the months of hostile talk indicating a possible war breaking out, now a top CIA spook has said that the North Korean dictator is actually a “very rational actor”. U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed changed emotions for Kim Jong Un over the months, from calling him a “tough cookie” who he would be “honored to meet” to labelling him an “evil madman” and “Little Rocket Man.” Kim Jong Un has meanwhile called Trump “deranged” and a “dotard” Yong Suk Lee, deputy assistant director of the CIA’s Korea Mission Center has said, “The last person who wants conflict on the Korean Peninsula is Kim Jong Un” Lee said, Kim’s “long-term goal is very clear,[and it’s been clear for the history of the Kim family regime, to come to some kind of big-power agreement with the United States and remove US forces from the peninsula”, Lee and other CIA officials believe there has been a “clarity of purpose” to the way the North Korean ruler is acting on the world stage. They believe that Pyongyang’s goal is to gain recognition as a major nuclear power and eventually negotiate a deal with the United States that sees American forces leave the Korean peninsula.

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Foreign firms want action not words from China about opening up its markets, warns EU envoy

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Foreign businesses are becoming increasingly frustrated by Beijing’s lack of action to open up its markets, according to the European Union’s envoy to China. President Xi Jinping delivered a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January firmly endorsing free trade and has promised to further open up the country’s market. Beijing suspended imports of some cheese products and required additional certificates for low-risk food imports from October 1. Foreign firms are also complaining about the possibility they will be forced to make technology transfers in exchange for market access. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker proposed to set up a screening framework for foreign investment in EU countries during his state of the union address on September 13, the same day that the United States banned acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor by a Chinese equity fund. China’s investment in the EU last year grew by 77 per cent compared with 2015 to €35 billion (41 billion dollar)”. The EU’s investment in China fell for the fourth straight year to €8 billion, down 23 per cent last year, while its investment in the United States reached 277 billion dollar. Juncker’s proposal, which was made in response to pressure from the German, French and Italian governments, was interpreted as a countermeasure to the rapid inflow of Chinese investment designed to buy up hi-tech firms and know-how from Europe. On Monday the EU also agreed on tough new rules to curb cheap imports, which Juncker described as an “anti-dumping measure”, although he insisted it was not aimed at any country in particular.

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Pentagon chief backs Tillerson’s North Korea diplomatic strategy after Trump tweet undermined it

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Pentagon chief Jim Mattis has tried to clear up doubts about the US administration’s North Korea strategy, backing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s effort to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear stand-off. Defence Secretary Mattis was speaking two days after US President Donald Trump appeared to undermine his top diplomat by saying Tillerson was “wasting his time” by maintaining contacts with Kim Jong-un’s regime. State Department officials insist Trump was not criticising Tillerson, but pressuring North to agree to discuss its disarmament while a diplomatic option remains on the table. Jim Mattis said: “The Defence Department supports fully Secretary Tillerson’s efforts to find a diplomatic solution but remains focused on defence of the United States and our allies”. Tillerson has explained the strategy as one of using United Nations and US sanctions and diplomatic pressure to convince Kim of his isolation and force him to negotiate nuclear disarmament. Trump wrote: “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man”.

 

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Employees recalled to work as Xinjiang scraps week-long National Day holiday

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Authorities in the restive Chinese region of Xinjiang have abruptly cancelled the week-long National Day holiday “to prepare” for the Communist Party congress later this month, residents say. Local government officials, academics and students told the South China Morning Post they had also been called back to work. “This is the first time the whole National Day holiday has been cancelled”, a nurse from southern Xinjiang said. Those working in the private sector were apparently not affected by the cancellation. Arrangements for students varied but one university employee said academics had been ordered this week to study a collection of confessions made by corrupt officials. The snap decision comes a year after rising political star Chen Quanguo took over as party boss of Xinjiang, introducing a series of security measures including asking residents to hand over their passports and beefed up police patrols. James Leibold, an expert on China’s ethnic minorities at La Trobe University in Australia, said the move appeared to be an effort by Chen to “demonstrate his utmost loyalty to Xi and that he is a safe pair of hands”. The State Council, China’s cabinet, said late last year that the National Day holiday would run from October 1 to 8 and those who had to work during the period would be paid up to three times their regular rate, state news agency Xinhua reported.

 

 

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