New Chinese customs data shows no oil exports in November 2017, but how much does that really tell us?
This week, newly released Chinese customs data show that Beijing apparently exported no oil products to North Korea in the entire month of November. Taken at face value, this would imply that China is increasingly taking its sanctions implementations obligations more seriously and perhaps even going above-and-beyond requirements set in place by the four major United Nations Security Council resolutions passed this year sanctioning North Korea for its continued nuclear and ballistic missile testing. (The fourth of these, resolution 2397, is less than a week old, having been adopted just last Friday.)
Even beyond oil, according to Reuters, the new data show that China “also imported no iron ore, coal or lead from North Korea in November.” It also “did not export any gasoline, jet fuel, diesel or fuel oil to” North Korea. This is according to data released by the General Administration of Customs. Of course, it’s worth recalling that all of this excludes China’s exports of crude oil to North Korea, which have not been publicly disclosed for years now. Without clear data, many analysts anticipate that North Korea still receives a substantial amount of crude oil from China through pipelines.
