China Bans Potentially Weapons-Related Exports To North Korea
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China’s Commerce Ministry on Tuesday issued a 236-page list of goods banned for exports to North Korea, fearing that the items could be used as components to make weapons of mass destruction.
In a statement to the press, Hong Lei, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that China’s decision came as part of a joint U.N. Security Council resolution on North Korea, underscoring China’s “strict attitude” in enforcing sanctions.
China’s Commerce Ministry on Tuesday issued a 236-page list of goods banned for exports to North Korea, fearing that the items could be used as components to make weapons of mass destruction.
In a statement to the press, Hong Lei, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that China’s decision came as part of a joint U.N. Security Council resolution on North Korea, underscoring China’s “strict attitude” in enforcing sanctions.
[quote]”However we would like to point out that in the U.N. Security Council’s decision on North Korea, punishment is not the goal,” Hong told a news briefing, as cited by Reuters. “It is to encourage denuclearization on the Korean peninsula.”[/quote]Related: China & North Korea: A Historically Tense Alliance Built On Necessity
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The 236-page list consists mostly of items known as “dual-use” technologies, meaning they have both civilian and military applications. The banned items on the list are divided into according to their possible applications for developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as missile systems.
Besides obvious red flags such as unmanned aerial drones or biological agents such as the Ebola virus, other banned items include nickel powder, flash X-ray generators and microwave antennas.
“The release of the new export control list is a signal China is concerned about the speeding up of weaponisation” of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, said Zhu Feng, the deputy director of the Centre for International and Strategic Studies at Beijing University, to the New York Times.
Zhu called the move “very important”, speculating that the Chinese had grown increasingly concerned about their neighbour’s nuclear program after new satellite imagery from two weeks ago showed that North Korea might have resumed production of Plutonium at its newly reconstructed nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.
In the past Western countries and independent experts have criticised China of failing to implement U.N. sanctions on the North. However, relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have been seriously strained in recent months, which led to an agreement between the U.S. and China on sanctions in March; while China’s second largest lender, the state-owned Bank of China, also shut off ties with the Foreign Trade Bank of North Korea in May.
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“I think… we are beginning to see the start of a fairly significant shift in Chinese policy, noted Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center, a think-tank in Beijing, to the Financial Times.
[quote]“China is increasingly unsatisfied with North Korea’s actions…[and] this is one of the practical actions to show it,” added another Chinese expert on North Korea, who declined to be identified because of his position in the government, to NYT.[/quote]
