BEIJING: China has released a list of technologies and goods banned from export to North Korea because of their possible use in building chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, China’s Ministry of Commerce said yesterday.
China and other members of the UN had declined in the past to give a full list of items banned from export, a situation UN monitors say had made difficult the task of determining if Beijing is implementing sanctions.
“It means China is complying with the UN Security Council resolutions,” said Zhang Liangui, an expert on North Korea at China’s Central Party School. “Since North Korea conducted the third nuclear test in February, China has begun to adjust its policy towards it, including prohibiting exports of dangerous products.”
China is North Korea’s major ally but it criticised the North’s nuclear test in February and has repeatedly called for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
China was also frustrated with North Korea’s threats against South Korea and the US after the imposition of new UN sanctions following the nuclear test.
China signed on to the sanctions but it remains North Korea’s largest trading partner and the UN has criticised it for failing to enforce trade bans on the North.
China has also come under pressure, especially from the US, to moderate its support for the North. The 236-page list names dozens of products known as “dual-use technologies,” meaning although ostensibly meant for civilian purposes, they can be used in military programmes.
“The dual-use products and technologies forbidden from being exported to North Korea delineated in this list have uses in weapons of mass destruction,” the ministry said in a statement. It did not say if it was a comprehensive list.
Released by the Ministry of Commerce, along with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the China Atomic Energy Authority, the document describes technologies that could build and fuel nuclear reactors and bans the export of several biological agents, including the Ebola virus.
“North Korea gets a lot of dual-use equipment and materials from China, and Beijing has in recent years become increasingly aware of the risks associated with unbridled commerce of nuclear dual-use technology and equipment,” said nuclear proliferation expert Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Because there are so many producers of these items it is more difficult to control than goods that are limited to nuclear use.” It was timely for China to crack down on trade of dual-use goods with North Korea, Hibbs added, because it was a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which is revising its list of dual-use goods subject to export bans.
Reuters
