Border city looks to new frontiers
► Dandong faces economic slowdown in wake of sanctions against N. Korea
The slow development of Dandong, Northeast China’s Liaoning Province, is partly a result of contracting trade with North Korea, but also stems from some of the city’s own shortcomings, Dandong residents told the Global Times during a visit last week to China’s largest border city in terms of population. Experts call for more policy support from the central government to revitalize the city.
Alot more could be done to capitalize on the natural assets of the struggling border city of Dandong, Northeast China’s Liaoning Province, experts said, now that economic sanctions against neighboring North Korea have taken a bite out of the city’s economy.
In 2015, Dandong GDP contracted 3 percent to 98.49 billion yuan ( 14.7 billion), according to the local government website dandong. gov. cn.
By the end of the first half of 2016, Dandong’s 41.89 billion yuan GDP ranked 10th of Liaoning’s 14 localities.
The city ought to be doing better, said Lü Chao, a research fellow at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences.
“Dandong should be one of China’s windows along its border,” Lü told the Global Times on Thursday.
“As a city with direct access to river and sea transport, it enjoys a unique geographic location, and it has an airport. As a transportation hub, it could easily link China, North Korea, South Korea and Japan,” Lü said.
However, at a time when the central government has been providing border cities elsewhere with incentives and policy support, tensions on the Korean Peninsula has affected its enthusiasm to invest in Dandong, Lü said.
Next to North Korea
Border trade has been one of the predominant businesses of many Chinese border cities. In Dandong, traders say that tensions on the peninsula have caused many in the business to perish, and China’s robust implementation of the UN sanctions since April has just made the situation worse.
Trade with North Korea has been declining since 2014, according to media reports.
To trade with North Korea, businessmen need solid connections with people there, said a 30- something Dandong native, who only gave his surname as Wang.
“For those who had nurtured business relationships over the years, as well as expertise in the goods they sell, it was like their businesses collapsed overnight when the sanctions took effect,” Wang told the Global Times.
“Now they are bosses with piles of money, but don’t have any idea about what to do next.”
Wang said that industries such as steel, minerals and chemicals have been hurt the most by the sanctions.
“On the other hand, the sanctions have not had much of an effect on small businesses that deal in the everyday items,” said Wang, who runs an aquaculture business.
The local government has shifted its focus for economic development toward tourism, which it described as a “pillar industry” in an economic strategy statement posted on its website.
The strategy got some help in September 2015 with the opening of a 208- kilometer- long high- speed rail line between Dandong and Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning. The railway cuts the travel time by two- thirds.
Gao Dongsheng, the owner of Dandong Danbao Trading Co, which sells souvenirs, said he hopes his business will benefit from turning Dandong into a tourist destination.
“There are North Koreans in Dandong, and they tend to buy everything they see,” Gao told the Global Times Thursday.
“A North Korean man and his daughter stayed in one of my guest houses, and bought some tourist souvenirs from me.”
In the first half of the year, the number of foreign tourists to the city grew 5.2 percent year- on- year, people. com. cn reported in July.
Still, Gao saw room for improvement in the city’s governance.
“City services for entrepreneurs, such as granting approvals from administrators, need to be improved because the low efficiency of government services hampers business development,” Gao said.
The city’s tourism sites could also need some improvement.
“The city’s boardwalk on the Yalu River is in need of renovations,” a resident surnamed Li told the Global Times on Thursday.
The boardwalk features views of the Sino- Korean Friendship Bridge and the Broken Bridge, which span the river between China and North Korea.
US warplanes destroyed the Broken Bridge during the Korean War ( 1950- 53), or the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea as Chinese historians call the war.
“Many Dandong natives like to say that the slow development is due to the fact that the city sits next to a bad neighbor, but I believe Dandong has a lot to do to improve itself. After all, why on earth should you be lucky enough to have a good neighbor?” a resident, who declined to be named, told the Global Times.
Looking for govt support
Dandong, like many third- and fourth- tier cities in China, is dealing with a manpower shortage as many of its younger residents leave in search of opportunities in larger cities.
A lack of manpower has undermined the city’s goals to develop laborintensive policies, Lü noted.
To address the issue, experts suggested authorities need to reconsider the country’s policy for foreign workers as the population ages.
North Korea sends a large number of workers abroad so it can have some foreign exchange reserves. If China’s central government loosens restrictions on foreign workers, it would help ease the local labor shortage, Lü said, noting that about 19,000 North Koreans currently work in China by some estimates
Some top- down arrangement is also needed to attract more capital to the city.
Jilin Province, located to the north of Liaoning, has long been trying to find an access point to the ocean and seaborne trade. To do so, it invested in ports in North Korea and Russia.
On the other hand, Liaoning, which has a long coastline and many ports, has devoted too little attention to the development of Dandong, in part because it doesn’t have the money to develop so many ports simultaneously.
“If the central government could work something out between the two provinces to channel capital from Jilin Province to Dandong, then the landlocked province could have a decent access to the sea, which would help its commodity exports such as grain and minerals,” Lü said.
“Dandong has well- developed infrastructure, so the proposal makes good economic sense, if only the rivalry between the provinces could be overcome,” Lü said.