DANDONG, China — Twice a day, long lines of trucks filled with fruit, small appliances, potatoes and rice wend their way for several blocks along Binjiang Zhonglu Street before negotiating a sharp turn onto the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge leading into North Korea.
These deliveries, like the single-lane bridge over the Yalu River, are a lifeline for the impoverished communist state, and the recent focus of international attention as the United States and other countries pressure China to use its trade leverage to force North Korea back to the nuclear negotiating table.
From China's perspective, however, it's not quite that easy. Beijing has as much interest in solving the crisis as Washington does, experts say, but it has limited leverage with North Korea, which declared last month that it had a nuclear weapon.
"China can't control these guys," said Yan Xuetong, international relations expert at Beijing's Qinghua University. "If they could, North Korea would never have announced its nuclear capability in the first place."
There is also debate in China about the wisdom and efficacy of pressing North Korea in such a way.
Although the nation may be impoverished and in need of just about everything, it remains extremely proud, convinced that its rigorous, disciplined society makes it at least the equal of China.
"They don't regard China as a big brother," said Hu Qinghua, 25, who was born and raised in North Korea before settling in Dandong a few years ago under a program that allows ethnic Chinese to repatriate. "They even look down on us a bit, calling us the 'Chinese mob.' "
A blockade of the bridge would be viewed as blackmail by the North Koreans, more likely to make them clam up in anger than open doors to dialogue, analysts said. And it could blunt Beijing's influence with leaders in Pyongyang, the capital, when it's needed most -- if and when a deal is forged to stem North Korea's weapons program.
"In North Asian cultures, if you use your leverage too openly, you just make people angry," said Mei Renyi, a professor with Beijing Foreign Studies University. "You get much more over the long run if you let them save face and make them feel it's their decision."
Like most information about North Korea, detailed trade statistics are not available, nor is the number of trucks and trains that cross annually into China. But locals say thousands of people are employed in manufacturing, transporting and selling goods on both sides of the border.
