Despite new United Nations sanctions further narrowing the categories of goods that can be traded with the hermit state this month, solar panels have remained off the growing blacklist.<\/p>\n
Traders from North Korea visit Yuan Huan\u2019s shop in the Chinese border city of Dandong several times a month to place orders, bringing their own translators and wads of cash.<\/p>\n
Yuan, manager of Sangle Solar Power, said sales to North Koreans have soared in the past two years, one of the border businesses still thriving despite growing US pressure for China to limit commerce with the Stalinist regime.<\/p>\n
Since North Korea mostly relies on outdated generators, blackouts are common and solar panels are prized for their role as backup power.<\/p>\n
Berkeley-based researchers at the Nautilus Institute estimated that at the end of 2014, about two percent of North Korea\u2019s population had acquired solar panels.<\/p>\n
And despite new United Nations sanctions further narrowing the categories of goods that can be traded with the hermit state this month, solar panels have remained off the growing blacklist.<\/p>\n
Yuan\u2019s shop offers a window into how Chinese traders do business with North Korea, a country with few allies and whose economy relies heavily on China\u2019s patronage.<\/p>\n
Every day, trucks filled with cargo cross the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge that connects Dandong to the North Korean city of Sinuiju.<\/p>\n
After receiving orders from North Korean customers, Yuan drops off packages at a riverside depot, and a Chinese logistics company takes care of transport across the waterway.<\/p>\n
Some of her North Korean customers place orders by phone, but most prefer to make arrangements in person, she said. \u201cIt is actually quite easy for traders to go back and forth. Some buy over 20 units at a time,\u201d Yuan told AFP.<\/p>\n
Several North Korean solar energy research and assembly plants have begun operation in recent years, according to domestic media reports, but Chinese panels appear to remain in high demand.<\/p>\n
Last year, China exported 466,248 solar panels across the border, according to official figures from Beijing.<\/p>\n
Immune from sanctions?<\/p>\n
China on Tuesday started banning imports of iron, iron ore and seafood from North Korea as it implements the new UN sanctions, which could cost Pyongyang $1 billion per year and were imposed after its two intercontinental ballistic missile tests.<\/p>\n
But in Dandong, where some 70% of trade between China and North Korea flows, solar panel merchants remain unfazed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems that overall, there are fewer North Korean traders coming over recently, but we\u2019re not affected by what\u2019s happening politically,\u201d said Shi Zhiyong, manager of the Huang Ming Solar Power shop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2009, I started seeing more North Korean traders coming to the store and their numbers have only gone up since,\u201d Shi told AFP.<\/p>\n
Both Yuan and Shi said their best-selling items are rooftop units that provide hot water supply. These cost between 2,700 and 14,000 yuan ($400 and $2,060).<\/p>\n
The purchases by households, offices and factories show that many urban residents have adequate disposable income, Johns Hopkins University researcher Curtis Melvin told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cAside from a few high-profile cases, such as the increase in fuel prices in North Korea or temporary suspension of coal exports to China, we haven\u2019t seen much evidence that (previous) sanctions have had a tremendously negative effect on North Korea\u2019s economy,\u201d Melvin added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite new United Nations sanctions further narrowing the categories of goods that can be traded with the hermit state this month, solar panels have remained off the growing blacklist. Traders from North Korea visit Yuan Huan\u2019s shop in the Chinese border city of Dandong several times a month to place orders, bringing their own translators […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2551,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2552,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2550\/revisions\/2552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}