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Liu Zhen

Kristin Huang

China announced on Thursday that all North Korean firms and joint ventures in China would be closed, as part of the latest sanctions imposed on Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons programme.
All existing joint ventures with North Korean firms in China, as well as entities solely owned by North Korean companies or individuals, are to be closed within 120 days from September 11, when the sanctions were adopted, a notice from the Ministry of Commerce said.
Joint ventures set up overseas by Chinese firms and North Korean entities or individuals should also be closed, it said.
China insists coal imports do not breach North Korea nuclear sanctions
But companies approved by the United Nations Security Council sanctions committee – including non-profit and non-commercial infrastructure projects – would be exempted, the notice said.
The UN Security Council voted unanimously on September 11 to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea – including a ban on textile exports and restrictions on its oil supply – in response to its sixth and largest nuclear test earlier this month.
The sanctions were described as the harshest yet against North Korea and could result in Pyongyang losing about US$800 million a year from textile exports and another US$500 million a year from its overseas workers.

The amount invested by North Koreans in China is small – direct investment totalled US$22 million from 2006 to 2015 according to the statistics bureau – and it has declined in recent years.
It fell from US$11.2 million in 2010 to US$290,000 in 2014, according to commerce ministry data.
And it was just US$70,000 in 2015 – the lowest level since 1997, according to the Korea International Trade Association in Seoul.
Investments were mainly in restaurants – North Koreans run more than 100 across China, including 26 in Beijing, the trade association said in a report last year.
200 reasons why North Korea declaring war is nothing new
Zhang Huizhi, a North Korean affairs expert at Jilin University in Changchun, said there were not many joint ventures in China between North Koreans and Chinese, but they were mostly restaurants.
“The number of restaurants has been declining since last year, when South Korea asked its citizens not to visit North Korean restaurants in foreign countries,” Zhang said.
“Those restaurants don’t generate a huge amount of revenue for the Kim [Jong-un] regime, so this ban won’t fundamentally hurt the North Korean economy.”
But she said the ban would further damage relations between Beijing and Pyongyang.
News of the ban had yet to reach some businesses, however. At one North Korean restaurant near the embassy in Beijing on Thursday, an employee told the South China Morning Post that it was business as usual and they had not heard about the shutdown.
Another specialist in North Korean affairs at Jilin University, Sun Xingjie, said the ban would also affect North Korea’s textile industry.
Of the 188,300 North Koreans who travelled to China in 2015, some 25,900 said they were in the country for business, while 94,200 were there for work, according to the National Tourism Administration.


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North Korea sanctions

All North Korean firms and joint ventures in China to be closed

Joint ventures set up by North Korean entities and individuals in China, many of which are restaurants, will have to shut down. Photo: Reuters

In this Monday, Sept. 4, 2017 photo, Chinese people watch a TV showing a North Korean propaganda program as they dine at a North Korean restaurant in Dandong, northeastern China's Liaoning province. Rising international tensions over Pyongyang's missile launches and nuclear tests seem a distant concern in the Chinese border city of Dandong, where trucks rumble across the bridge to North Korea and people stroll the promenade beside the Yalu River within sight of North Korean border guards. (AP Photo/Helene Franchineau)

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(FILES) This file photo taken on April 07, 2017 shows US President Donald Trump (R) welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) to the Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. China announced on May 12, 2017 an agreement with the United States to open its market to US beef, natural gas and certain financial services, a month after talks between their leaders. / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSON

This undated picture released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 3, 2017 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) looking at a metal casing with two bulges at an undisclosed location. North Korea has developed a hydrogen bomb which can be loaded into the country's new intercontinental ballistic missile, the official Korean Central News Agency claimed on September 3. Questions remain over whether nuclear-armed Pyongyang has successfully miniaturised its weapons, and whether it has a working H-bomb, but KCNA said that leader Kim Jong-Un had inspected such a device at the Nuclear Weapons Institute. / AFP PHOTO / KCNA VIA KNS / STR / South Korea OUT / REPUBLIC OF KOREA OUT ---EDITORS NOTE--- RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO/KCNA VIA KNS" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS THIS PICTURE WAS MADE AVAILABLE BY A THIRD PARTY. AFP CAN NOT INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, LOCATION, DAT

FILE - This May 11, 2015, file photo, shows land reclamation of Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands by China in the South China Sea. China is protesting a U.S. Navy patrol that brought a guided missile destroyer near a group of manmade islands including Mischief Reef in the South China Sea that are controlled by Beijing. (Ritchie B. Tongo/Pool Photo via AP, File)

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (C) is accompanied by US Ambassador to China Terry Branstad as they arrive for a bilateral meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang at the Zhongnanhai Leadership Compound in Beijing on September 25, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / Andy Wong

Tillerson will likely repeat the need for China and the US to work together to restrain North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and temper further escalation. Photo: AP

China insists coal imports do not breach North Korea nuclear sanctions

View from a construction site on the Chinese border with North Korea. Customs data showed that China had imported coal from its neighbour in August. Photo: AP

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China

Diplomacy

Businesses have been given 120 days from September 11, when the latest UN sanctions were adopted, to shut down


North Korea nuclear crisis

North Korea