Economy of Anticipation and Materiality of Aspiration in Dandong, China

Chapter 10 Waiting and Remembering: Economy of Anticipation and Materiality of Aspiration in Dandong, China

Christina Kim Chilcote

1 Introduction

Facing the North Korean city of Sinuiju across the Yalu River, the Chinese border city of Dandong in Liaoning Province has recently taken on large urban developmental projects as part of a plan to build the wider city as the new economic hub of East Asia.1 This plan began to take shape when Dandong was included in the “Five Points One Line” development strategy in 2009, which envisioned well-connected industrial zones along the northeast coast of Chi- na. With major highway and road constructions, linking Dandong to large nearby cities of Dalian and Shenyang, the city began building a new district south of the current metropolitan center. This new district, according to the local government, is expected to house 400,000 new residents, and become “the modern administrative, technological, commercial, residential centers of the future Dandong” (Dandong Municipal Committees of Communist Party of China 2010). The following year, construction for a new bridge connecting the new district to North Korea began with domestic and foreign investment. The then mayor announced that this new Yalu Bridge is expected to “become a major link between the two countries” and to play a vital role in the city’s economic future (China Daily 2010). At the same time, North Korea and China announced plans to build two new Special Economic Zones (sezs) on two North Korean islands, Hwanggeumpyong and Wihwa, located on the Yalu River between Dandong and Sinuiju. These new urban development projects – the

1 A plan to build an economic hub in Dandong began during Kim Jong-Il’s unofficial visit to Beijing in January 2001 to meet with Jiang Zemin, the General Secretary of the Communist Party at the time. Through ensuing meetings, China and North Korea agreed to jointly develop the Dandong-Sinuiju area as an economic passageway and future distribution center for East Asia.

220 Chilcote district, the bridge and the two sezs – make up the plan to build Dandong as an economic hub of East Asia. While construction projects in and around Dandong are still underway, hopes for what they may bring are high. During an interview with Daily China, an official from the city’s Foreign Economic and Trade Bureau boasted the new district’s potential:

With two high-speed railways, four expressways, a seaport and an airport, Dandong has become one of the region's hubs of transportation and lo- gistics. Its economic hinterland covers Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia and even extends to all of Northeast Asia, including the dprk, South Korea, Russia, Mongolia and Japan. zhu and liu 2012

Here, what distinguishes Dandong from other Chinese cities connected by these railways, expressways and water and air routes is its close tie, historically and geographically, to North Korea. Its former mayor Chen Tiexin (March 2004 – February 2008) specifically pointed this out when he said that “[Dandong’s] unique geographic positions means we can explore international shipping routes and develop border trade with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea” (China Daily 2009). As this chapter will demonstrate, it is Dandong’s ties to North Korea through its neighboring city Sinuiju that is fueling the borderland’s development toward a future based on livelier cross border trades. Currently connected to Sinuiju by the Friendship Bridge, Dandong is already home to approximately 20,000 North Korean laborers working in factories in and near the city and to agents representing various companies and factories in North Korea.2 Dandong hosts 70% of Sino-North Korean trade traffic, the majority of which are filtered to other larger cities around China, and many local residents rely on some type of trans-border activities.3 In Dandong, the familiar characterization of North Korea as behind the times and economi- cally isolated from the world – characterizations that anticipate its eventual collapse – transform into lucrative business opportunities. Entrepreneurs from China, South Korea, Japan, the United States and other nations have gathered

2 Today, there are over 150,000 North Korean visitors to Dandong annually. Approximately 70% are business or work related (Jung 2014). See Kim and Kang (2015) for more on North Korean laborers in Dandong. 3 This percentage generally fluctuates from 40% to 70% depending on what is included in the statistic. The lower percentage excludes trade traffic that merely passes through the city while the higher number includes all trade traffic. See Seung Ho Jung (2014: 6–7) for more analysis on this statistic.