What influence? Chinese Koreans wonder after North Korea nuclear test
By Megha Rajagopalan YANJI, China (Reuters) - An ethnic Korean woman in a cafe near China's border with North Korea said she was terrified on hearing of the North's announcement this week that it had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. The United States is pressing China to end "business as usual" with its North Korean ally, but in Yanji, 30 km (19 miles) from the border and home to many ethnic Koreans, the mood was one of resigned scepticism. "China has not been able to stop North Korea from doing things like this before, so I think it may be the same this time," said the woman, a teacher who gave her family name as Piao, the Chinese form of the common Korean surname Park. Most of the roughly two million ethnic Koreans living in China dwell in areas along the border with the North. Many have business and family ties with the isolated state. Government buildings in Yanji carry signs in both Korean and Chinese, and its streets are filled with restaurants selling Korean specialties. But China cannot control North Korea, say Chinese academics in the northeastern city, even though it is the North's main economic and diplomatic backer. The bulk of North Korea's business dealings are with China, which bought 90 percent of its exports in 2013, South Korean data shows. Li Zhonglin, an ethnic Korean Chinese academic from Yanbian University, said he believed the latest nuclear test would provoke a stronger response from China than did North Korea's previous three tests, but stressed there were limits. "It's a question of to what extent China will clamp down on trade," said Li, who frequently travels to North Korea, studying its economic ties with China. "North Korea is completely dependent on China - if China goes too far in closing off trade, if we shut down our ports to them, they will see it as tantamount to an attack." Financial sanctions were mostly meaningless, Li said, adding that no major Chinese bank still dealt with the North and that authorities had cracked down on small financial institutions in the border town of Dandong, a gateway to the North. The United States overestimates China's economic influence on the North, said a second academic at Yanbian University, who looks at relations between China and North Korea. "They didn't even notify us before carrying out a nuclear test," said the professor, who asked not to be identified because he is not allowed to speak with foreign media. "They just do whatever they want. The relationship is not what it was during the Cold War." (Writing by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
