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China said on Saturday that it was suspending all imports of coal from North Korea as part of its effort to enact United Nations Security Council sanctions aimed at stopping the country's nuclear weapons and ballistic-missile program.
The ban takes effect on Sunday and will last until the end of the year, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said in a brief statement posted on its website on Saturday. Chinese trade and aid have long been a vital economic crutch for North Korea, and the decision strips North Korea of one of its most important sources of foreign currency.
Coal has accounted for 34 percent to 40 percent of North Korean exports in the past several years, and almost all of it was shipped to China, according to South Korean government estimates.
The ban comes six days after the North Korean test of a ballistic missile that the Security Council condemned as a violation of its resolutions that prohibited the country from developing and testing ballistic missile technology.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by OrugTor on Monday February 20 2017, @03:46PM
Last month China was reported to "... cancel 104 coal-fired projects in development, amounting to a whopping 120 gigawatts of capacity in all." (www.vox.com) The nation is pursuing a policy of less coal and it's serious about it. Stopping the North Korean coal supply is a threefer: less coal, and expensive foreign coal, at that; they appear to be taking a hard line on their favorite rogue nation; and it looks like a gesture of cooperation with the new US president. Number three is big in domestic news but likely small or non-existent in the Chinese government's worldview.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @07:22PM
Well of course everything is connected in some way. I'm glad they are waking up to the pollution. It's probably their #1 fear right now as in "the peasants will surely rebel if they can't breathe." Sorry I forgot about their political context, replace peasants with proletariat.