In the past year, a growing sense of detente on the
Korean peninsula has brought about a wave of optimistic real estate purchases in the Chinese city of Dandong, the
Asian continent’s main portal to
North Korea.
Now that North Korean leader
Kim Jong-un has again visited
China and invited President
Xi Jinping for a long-awaited reciprocal visit, is it time to uncork the champagne for Dandong and begin the revival of the northeast Chinese economy via the doorway to Korea? Is Dandong ready to become, as some mainland outlets so breathlessly asked in April 2018, the
“Shenzhen of northeast China”?
Probably not yet. It was easy to see the reasons for the optimism in Dandong in 2018: a significant North Korean delegation attended the
Pyeongchang Olympics, there was a meaningful inter-Korean summit at Panmunjom, and then another one, and the South Korean leader visited Pyongyang. US President
Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talked about keeping tough
sanctions on North Korea, but did so while developing a budding rapport with Kim, culminating in the
Singapore summit. Kim broke his own deadlock on travel to Beijing, no longer keeping the
Chinese Communist Party at arm’s length, and visited China no fewer than three times in 2018.
On January 7, Kim's train stopped over in Dandong, and he met some local officials, including the city’s party secretary, as well as the party secretary of Liaoning province. But there were few specifics discussed about cross-border
trade and the big-ticket items are still waiting for North Korean action.
Kim has, at least, given development in the northwest salient of his country a certain momentum. In mid-November, he inspected and presented a massive plan for Sinuiju’s renovation by April 2022. This was a vast canvas for the architects he has been assiduously cultivating in Pyongyang, and the plan includes cluster after cluster of new flat buildings such as are seen in the capital, large new parks and new housing along the Yalu River waterfront.
All of this change was posited as a domestic development, a sign of the new “strategic line” and all-out push for economic development. What this would mean for Dandong was still unclear – would the bridge to Dandong’s Xinchengqu and Guomenwan trade zone finally be connected to Sinuiju’s road network? Would North Korea set up a twin trade zone on its side of the border with a large customs house, duty free zone and the like? This went unremarked on by Kim.
