A long-delayed highway bridge linking China and North Korea has opened, Chinese state media report, as commerce ties improve between the neighbours.
China is North Korea’s largest trading accomplice and a lifeline against heavy worldwide sanctions over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.
The New Yalu River Bridge spans 3km (1.9 miles) from the Chinese border metropolis of Dandong to Sinuiju in North Korea, and is set to become the important land route for commerce between them.
Its launch, initially slated for 2014, had been indefinitely postponed after North Korea halted construction of its roads and customs services, as relations with Beijing turned frosty.
Chinese Premier Li Qiang, in a video deal with on Thursday, said the bridge was a “new landmark symbolising the traditional friendship between China and North Korea”, and that the two nations were “opening a new chapter” in bilateral ties.
The New Yalu River Bridge is an different to the decades-old Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, which was constructed between 1937 and 1943 during Imperial Japan’s occupation of the area.
The new bridge is an “important facility for connectivity” between the two nations, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Wednesday, including that the route would “further facilitate trade and people-to-people exchanges”.
Last yr, bilateral commerce reached $2.7bn, marking a restoration to pre-pandemic ranges, principally fuelled by Chinese exports to North Korea.
A pointy and sudden increase in commerce across the border is “unlikely” as the UN sanctions on North Korea stay in impact, Kang Jun-young, a professor of Chinese research at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, tells the BBC.
“Pyongyang is also wary of a sudden flood of Chinese imports that would greatly expand China’s influence over its domestic market,” he provides.
“China is well aware of these concerns, so trade is more likely to grow gradually.”
Beijing and Pyongyang are long-standing allies with a mutual defence treaty, the only one that China has with any nation. The relationship is usually described “as close as lips and teeth”, a comment first made by China’s former chief Mao Zedong.
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