China Once Again Caught Violating North Korean Sanctions on Coal Imports

Over at One Free Korea has a good posting up showing how yet again the Chinese are cheating on the North Korean coal import ban:

The lesson I’ve learned from this and other, similar episodes is that one should be cautious before believing any highly publicized case of China enforcing sanctions against Pyongyang or applying economic pressure to it. I’ve seen this show enough times to suspect that China has a deliberate media manipulation strategy of making a big deal of enforcing sanctions until reporters lose interest. (……)

Take the coal export cap under UNSCR 2321, which later became a coal ban in UNSCR 2371. Remember August, when China announced that it was halting coal imports from North Korea? We’ve since learned that this is yet another case of China initially complying with an obligation, only to resume its cheating as soon as reporters looked the other way. The flaw in this strategy is that nowadays, too many reporters don’t look the other way for long. The sharp-eyed crew at NK News has been especially diligent about spotting North Korean bulk carriers at Chinese coal terminals, but this time, I’ll credit VOA.  [One Free Korea]

You can read the rest at the link, but the Chinese are not even trying to hide their cheating considering they imported 509,000 tons of coal last month. It is pretty clear the Chinese government feels they will not be held accountable for cheating on the coal ban and they are probably right.