{"id":2836,"date":"2015-09-07T08:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thediplomaticenvoy.com\/?p=2836"},"modified":"2015-10-19T16:30:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T20:30:46","slug":"china-links-n-korea-with-high-speed-rail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/thediplomaticenvoy\/2015\/09\/07\/china-links-n-korea-with-high-speed-rail\/","title":{"rendered":"China Links N. Korea With High-Speed Rail"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matthew Schaller<\/a>
\nStaff Writer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Continuing efforts to boost economic ties with North Korea, China recently opened a high-speed railway network to the North Korean border. The railway, which has been under construction since 2010, will run 127 miles from Shenyang, Northeast China to the border city of Dandong in the southeast, which faces North Korea across the Yalu River. According to SBS, the railway\u00a0is expected to shorten the journey between the two countries from 3.5 hours to just over an hour and a half.<\/p>\n

The city of Dandong accounts for about 80 percent of trade between the two countries. However, Pyongyang’s\u00a0rhetoric of nuclear weapons development has slowed the development of economic zones aimed at pairing cheap North Korean labor with Chinese capital. This has resulted in China’s warming\u00a0relationship with the DPRK’s\u00a0main economic rival, South Korea<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the Los Angeles Times, Beijing has nonetheless\u00a0announced plans to open a border trade zone in Dandong during the North Korea-China Economic, Trade, Culture and Tourism Expo in October. However, as Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports, the projected plans are nothing new.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is doing what the United States did in the 1950s, on an equally grandiose scale, in building roadways, rail and airports to connect the country internally and with countries around it,\u201d CSIS\u00a0stated.<\/p>\n

In other words, the\u00a0railway\u00a0could eventually prove beneficial for overall connectivity in the region. Even so, with a sense of renewed optimism in these types of grand deals apparent, one need not look too far back into history to realize that Pyongyang has repeatedly been unable to hold up its end of a\u00a0bargain.\u00a0 Pyongyang\u2019s lack of funds\u00a0and desperation for foreign currency have left the capital struggling to comply with their obligations to the Chinese.<\/p>\n

It is this reason, according to the Globe and Mail, that eventually led the North Korean government to send tens of thousands of its citizens to work abroad, even\u00a0as far as the Middle East. Additionally,\u00a0foreign investors have been constantly hurt\u00a0by Pyongyang. For instance, the North Korean government has owed\u00a0Sweden\u00a0hundreds of millions of dollars for forty years for the\u00a0theft of 1000\u00a0Volvo cars, reports Newsweek<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wei Ling, professor of international relations and trade at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, observes, \u201cOverall expansion of Chinese overseas investment is the end goal. In North Korea, the leader and the policies are very full of uncertainty, especially with its interaction with China over the past decade.\u201d According to Wei, Beijing now \u201cincreasingly feels like North Korea is more of a liability than an opportunity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continuing efforts to boost economic ties with North Korea, China recently opened a high-speed railway network to the North Korean border. Beijing now \u201cincreasingly feels like North Korea is more of a liability than an opportunity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[382,386],"tags":[393,420],"class_list":["post-2836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","category-asia","tag-china","tag-north-korea"],"yoast_head":"\nChina Links N. 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