When North Korean traders give Li Jian long lists of the goods they want to buy, he checks the items against a 236-page Chinese translation of the UN sanctions imposed after Kim Jong Un’s regime conducted a fifth nuclear weapons test in September.
“If it’s on the sanctions list, we can’t provide it,” Mr Li said from his office in downtown Dandong, the Chinese border city through which about 70 per cent of Sino-North Korean trade passes. “Even if we did, the goods would be detained at [Chinese] customs.”
At the weekend, US President Donald Trump said that the Chinese government could, and should, do more to rein in Mr Kim’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. “China is very much the economic lifeline to North Korea,” he wrote in a tweet. “So while nothing is easy, if they want to solve the North Korean problem, they will.”