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And so if China really intends to exert pressure on Pyongyang, Dandong will be the place where the hammer will drop. But there's reason to doubt China's readiness to take further steps toward squeezing North Korea. One reason is self-interest. Trade with the North is vital to border cities like Dandong, which has registered double-digit growth in recent years, according to local government statistics. Much of that is due to its trade with North Korea, which has more than quadrupled since 1999. Others have benefited from doing business with the North: energy and fuels constitute the bulk of China's exports to the North, accounting for nearly $300 million last year. Significantly, food was the second largest product, at about $150 million, followed by electrical and other machinery and plastics.
The importance of the North Korean market to the Chinese helps to explain why officials have been relatively slow to enforce the U.N. sanctions. At Dandong's three-story customs compound, a plump, middle-aged man who calls himself Li and says he is a truck driver gestures toward the 15 or so vehicles waiting to be inspected before driving onto the bridge over the Yalu. "The inspections are a little stricter, but it's really just for show. They poke around a bit and then let you go."
What scares Beijing most about sanctions is less what they would mean to China's economy than what damage they could do to North Korea's. In the mid-1990s, North Korea suffered a severe famine that lasted for several years and left perhaps hundreds of thousands dead. Although increased trade and relatively good harvests in the past couple of years mean the current situation is fairly stable (Pyongyang doesn't publish reliable economic statistics, but most estimates put GDP growth in recent years in the 1%-to-2% range), the North remains dependent on outside food aid. According to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, conditions could deteriorate quickly. A forthcoming report warns that "a perfect storm may be brewing for a return of the famine." The report notes that Pyongyang last year reintroduced the same public food-distribution system that had collapsed in the 1990s, and rejected assistance from international aid groups. Those problems have been further exacerbated by summer floods that damaged crops and infrastructure.
The prospect of a humanitarian crisis is not lost on Chinese officials, who find themselves trying to engage North Korea while at the same time walling it off. Above Dandong sits a watchtower whose stone battlements are silhouetted by the dying rays. The tower is one of the first outposts of China's Great Wall, remnants of which wind up and down the hills leading to Dandong. Now China is building another wall, a fence along its entire border with North Korea. But even when that structure is complete, it seems unlikely that Beijing will pay much more than lip service to imposing the kind of severe sanctions that, while they would teach North Korea a lesson for its nuclear adventures, could also bring about renewed famine and the prospect of hundreds of thousands of refugees.