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发帖数: 372 | 1 http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21712060-border-between-two-countries-shows-how-they-have-grown-apart-politics-and-pity
Postcard from Dandong
Politics and pity on the border of China and North Korea
The border between the two countries shows how they have grown apart
“LOOK! There’s one!” shouts a member of the tour party as 40 people raise
their phones to take a picture: “Three of them, up there on the mountain!
” Commentary from another tour-boat blares out over the Yalu river: “There
are two North Korean farmers. They are using their hands!” Moments later
all eyes turn to watch a man sifting for shells, and then a soldier emerge
from his turquoise sentry post. The Koreans are clearly used to the gawping
hordes: few glance up at the boatloads of laughing, chattering Chinese.
Mao Zedong said that China and North Korea were as close as lips and teeth.
Here, near the border town of Dandong, they are separated by just a few
hundred metres of murky water. But the gulf between them is decades deep.
Most of the world thinks about this 1,400km-long border in terms of economic
sanctions. The international community has been trying for years to
constrain North Korea’s nuclear-weapons development with trade restrictions
, and China is its biggest trading partner (Congo comes a distant second).
In March 2016 the United Nations imposed its most severe sanctions yet after
the pariah state staged a fourth nuclear test, apparently aimed at making
its bombs small enough to sit on missiles. These sanctions were further
stiffened in November.
Dandong, an urban backwater in the armpit of Manchuria (see map), is at the
sharp end of this sanctions regime. It is just one kilometre from North
Korea’s sixth biggest city, Sinuiju, and it is far closer to Pyongyang, the
North Korean capital, than it is to Beijing. More than two-thirds of
Chinese trade with North Korea flows through it. In September America filed
criminal charges against a Dandong company and several of its citizens,
accusing them of sanction-busting.
Ever stronger restrictions on the lorries carrying goods across the rickety
single carriageway of Dandong’s “Friendship Bridge” might seem a worrying
prospect for the city of 800,000 people. But Dandong has found another way
to profit from its propinquity to North Korea. All told, trade accounts for
less than a third of the city’s GDP. Tourism, on the other hand, provides
half of its GDP. And as trade falls, tourism grows.
Dandong has various modest attractions. Locals boast of its sweet peaches,
plentiful blueberries and wild silkworm pupae; the Qianlong emperor is said
to have enjoyed its hot springs in the 18th century. Yet the vast majority
of people who visit the city these days come because of what is across the
river. Even the easternmost part of the Great Wall, a few kilometres to the
north, is appealing mainly as a vantage point to spy on the hermit kingdom.
Just as Hong Kongers used to peek into China in the 1970s to see hard-core
socialism in action, so today’s Chinese tourists troop to Dandong. Many
come to gawp as at a zoo: the Chinese authorities have put up signs urging
tourists not to throw objects to people on the North Korean side or “
provoke” them, not to climb any fences and not to “fly sky lanterns,
drones or small aircraft” near the border. Some treat it as any other
outing, paying more attention to their selfie sticks and shopping than to
life on the other shore. Korea (many tourists neither know nor care that
there is a difference between the north and south) is just a largely
unexamined backdrop against which to hang out with their friends.
For others the politics and the poverty are part of the point. They see in
North Korea a reminder of their own sad past. Many look at it with a tinge
of nostalgia: the uncluttered shore across the water reminds them of the Mao
era, which they think of as a simpler, more equal time in China. “It’s
the only true Socialist country left,” says the owner of an old military
telescope who charges tourists 10 yuan ($1.50) to look out at “beautiful
North Korea” from the summit of the Great Wall, before returning to the war
film he is watching on his phone.
C*A*S*H
The two People’s Republics were born just over a year apart, that of Korea
in 1948, that of China in 1949. After North Korea invaded the South in 1950
China’s support was instrumental in repelling the American-led response and
producing a peninsula divided into two countries. To this day, North Korea
’s main importance to the Chinese is as a buffer against American-backed
South Korea.
The role it played in the Korean war is part of the Chinese Communist Party
’s sustaining mythology, a symbol of bold China going toe-to-toe with
America. That, perhaps, explains why military fatigues, or rather their
modern fashion incarnation, are the clothing of choice for many tourists.
Sui Liufeng, from Fuxin in northern China, is finding it hard to hold her
selfie stick still on a moving boat. A badge on her zip-up camouflage
tracksuit reads “Hot Field Army” and an American flag is patched on to her
left arm; her camouflage shoes have blue laces but the rose in her hair is
regulation khaki.
At night the Chinese promenade in Dandong drips with neon. The North Korean
shore is shrouded with darkness, but for a few unchanging lights1 of 13
Gilles Sabrie
It is Ms Sui’s first visit. Another member of her tour group, Lu Zhufeng,
wearing matching camouflage top, trousers and hat, has been to Dandong three
times in two years. “Red tourism” that celebrates revolutionary history
is now a huge industry in China: millions of tourists each year pay homage
at sites such as Mao’s birthplace or Yan’an, the Communist Party’s early
base. Many are pensioners who remember life under Mao. Ms Sui is typical:
she retired at 50 and she has the time and money to explore.
This fast-expanding cohort is one reason China’s domestic tourism has
increased at 10-15% a year for much of the past decade. Only 5% of Chinese
people hold a passport; Dandong gives the other 95% a chance to experience
the abroad at home. A decade ago, the city had almost no tourist
infrastructure. Now it is a holiday town, with a promenade, seafood
restaurants and shops full of tourist tat. Touts hawk tours beside the giant
Mao statue at the railway station. Visitors rent Korean dresses for photos.
A “pleasure island” has a food court and performance area with a view of
North Korea. The local government is building a new museum to join China’s
only memorial to the Korean war. Visits to the “Broken Bridge”, which the
Americans destroyed during the war, generate far more traffic than the
Friendship Bridge just beside it.
Appealing to the better nature of Chinese tourists is good business: the
skipper of a speedboat sells cigarettes to visitors who want to throw them
to North Koreans. (Soldiers on the Korean shore openly beg for smokes and
food.) A North Korean in khaki clothes and a blue flat cap brings his small
vessel alongside a Chinese speedboat to offer ginseng, salted duck eggs and
kimchi. Another trader pokes his suntanned face out from under a tarpaulin,
wearing a wool coat with a resplendent white fur collar. Tourists gave them
their clothes, explains the Chinese speedboat driver, who says the fur-
collared man is disabled. Later that day the trader reappears by a larger
tour boat: the “disabled” man is visible in the distance, standing up in a
second boat and stretching his arms to the sky.
Unlike most poor countries, North Korea is cursed neither by geography nor
climate: its underdevelopment is instead a choice of its youthful dictator,
Kim Jong Un, and his father and grandfather before him. Until the mid-1990s
North Korea’s GDP per person was higher than China’s. Chinese growth took
off just as the Soviet Union collapsed, dragging the North Korean economy
down with it. Power cuts became widespread; the regime subjected an already
calorie-poor North Korea to famine. Today, incomes in North Korea are an
eighth of those in China.
The shores of the Yalu testify to the contrast. Dandong’s skyscrapers are
typical of any modern Chinese city. Until recently the North Korean
riverfront was bare apart from a lone Ferris wheel. Now there appears to be
a flashy conference centre, a water slide and a few tall buildings. That
might suggest change. But the stylish blue and white tower block is in fact
a facade stuck on to a much shabbier building. The Ferris wheel does not
budge. The water slide has no water.
The game of life is hard to play
After dark, Dandong’s buildings and pleasure boats drip with neon. A single
tacky gift shop claiming to sell North Korean souvenirs (some have “made
in China” labels) shines brighter than the entire Korean shore. There, the
lights are few but constant; never dimming, never changing, night after
night. The message is more truthful than Mr Kim’s Potemkin posturing would
have it: the lights are on but no one’s home.
In the early years of Kim Jong Un’s rule, half a decade ago, cheap Chinese
goods flooded across the border. The two sides agreed China would build a
new bridge and high-speed rail links. But Mr Kim, whom the Chinese call “
Kim Fatty the Third”, went on to sabotage the plans. First he staged a
nuclear test to coincide with Xi Jinping’s accession as China’s president
in 2013. Then he executed his uncle, Jang Sung Taek, a powerful official who
had been the main conduit between the two regimes.
Dandong New City, a few kilometres down the shore, is a monument to a trade
hub that never was. Rice paddies were paved over for apartment complexes
such as “Left Bank of Uptown” and “Singapore City”, but only 15,000
people live in the new city, which has a capacity of 400,000. A four-lane
suspension bridge straddling the Yalu was completed in 2014, but the North
Koreans never built a road to meet it. A customs building with an empty
rectangular space in the middle, intended to represent the Chinese character
for “gateway”, instead acts as a monumental metaphor for a grand plan
with a hole in it.
Trade between the two had dropped sharply from its high in the early 2010s
even before the sanctions of 2016; but China is too wary of a North Korean
collapse to cut its old ally off completely. Every evening lorries waiting
to enter a goods yard for inspection block traffic opposite Dandong’s
branches of Gucci and Max Mara. Customs officials are supposed to look for
sanctioned goods, but it is hard to discern how rigorous they are. The yard
is not guarded; anyone can wander in off the street. One former lorry driver
says customs officers know many drivers well, so may not check every load.
Elsewhere on China’s fringe, at the borders with Laos and Myanmar in the
south and Pakistan in the west, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has a
heavy presence. Yet there appear to be few soldiers in Dandong. At a narrow
point in the river known as “One Step Across” a work team of 12 North
Koreans is clearly visible. But China’s fences are just six feet high, with
a small roll of barbed wire above. For long stretches there are only a few
metres of open water between the two countries, not even a fence. At
Hwanggumpyong, where the border between the countries is on dry land, there
is just a gate with a single padlock; the guard on the North Korean side has
no Chinese counterpart. More surveillance cameras watch an average street
in any Chinese city than survey the border in Dandong.
You might expect a constant flow of defectors from a country as unpleasant
as North Korea. At times there have been. Local lore has it that in the
1990s, during the famine, a Chinese farmer could buy a Korean wife for just
a sack of rice. Today, though, it seems that surprisingly few people cross
over. The brokers who arrange such things are prohibitively expensive;
refugees who flee to China are labelled “illegal economic refugees” or “
criminals” and sent back if they are caught.
There are still some illegal Koreans in Dandong—and legal ones, too. Locals
claim to be able to spot them at a glance: they have old, drab clothes,
says one man; many wear a small lapel pin bearing the image of Kim Il Sung,
grandfather of the current dictator. Most of those walking the streets
openly are truckers, a privileged job. Local Chinese garment factories also
hire teams of Koreans sent by their government to earn cash. They are cheap,
stable employees. “North Korean street”, close to the goods yard, serves
all these groups: it has a dog meat restaurant and a North Korean bakery
with pretty but tasteless treats made of black rice, sesame and pumpkin. One
block south are more prosperous shops selling products from South Korea.
Even here the two Koreas are divided.
For many Chinese tourists, the crowning glory of the Dandong experience is
North Korean cabaret. The government owns several restaurants in Dandong,
and many more across China. They are a useful source of hard currency. Each
has similar decor, pricey but mediocre food and identikit Korean waitresses
in red collarless suits, all from well-connected families in Pyongyang. Most
do a three-year stint: one 24-year- old says she misses her parents after
two years away; she last called them in January.
Performances begin at 6.30 each evening. Two women with painted smiles
wearing short, sparkly mustard dresses and five-inch platform heels slap at
acoustic guitars; another lifts her saxophone high in a way only possible
when the instrument is made of plastic, not brass. All look as though they
have learnt how to perform by watching lip-synched 1980s pop videos.
Waitresses clap and persuade middle-aged Chinese men to join them on stage.
The set finishes with an anthem to the PLA. Across the river the unchanging
night lights burn on. |
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