Chinese state media triumphantly announced the opening of the New Yalu River Bridge connecting Dandong, China, and Sinuiju, North Korea on Thursday — a project believed to have been completed in 2014 but stalled by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and its diplomatic strain on bilateral ties.
The flagship state news outlet Xinhua noted that senior leadership in Beijing recognized the opening of the bridge via a pre-recorded speech by Premier Li Qiang, who serves in practice as second-in-command and domestic policy overseer for communist dictator Xi Jinping. Li celebrated the bridge opening as a sign that China-North Korea relations were regularly strengthening, including through economic ties which are significantly limited by international sanctions.
“The bridge is bound to become a new landmark symbolizing the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK [North Korea],” Li declared, according to Xinhua. Li reportedly described the bridge as “an opportunity to continuously optimize port clearance, enhance connectivity, tap the potential for cooperation in border areas, and improve the well-being of the two peoples.”
He also suggested that China is open to expanding “political mutual trust” and “practical cooperation” with North Korea.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry separately applauded the upcoming opening of the bridge on Wednesday. In response to a question asking if the bridge would indeed be open on Thursday, spokeswoman Mao Ning confirmed that it would and celebrated the bilateral relationship with North Korea.
“China and the DPRK are friendly neighbors linked by mountains and rivers,” she said. “The New Yalu River Bridge will serve as an important infrastructure for bilateral connectivity and further facilitate the economic, trade, and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries and contribute to the welfare of the two peoples.”
CGTN, a Chinese state television network, published images of the bridge, appearing pristine and operative on Thursday.
The fanfare over the opening of the connective channel, which will dramatically expand the traffic volume that can cross the international border on the Yalu River, has not at press time been replicated on the North Korean side. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) did not appear to cover the opening of the bridge as of press time on Thursday. North Korean state media — the only legally available news sources in the country — often delay updating the population on critical news stories, however.
The reporting delay may be a residual effect of the cooling of ties between China and North Korea in the aftermath of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, however. The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo observed that the New Yalu River Bridge had allegedly been completed 12 years ago and left unopened. The Chinese government is believed to have paid for and completed most of the construction of the structure, but the parties did not agree to open the bridge as the North Korean side did not have sufficient road infrastructure to accommodate the increased traffic from China in the region.
In April 2019, the two countries announced the opening of a smaller, separate bridge across the Yalu River, connecting Manpo, North Korea, to Jian, China. The opening followed the imposition of United Nations sanctions two years prior on North Korea, a response to its last known nuclear weapons test and a policy that China did not block at the Security Council. As a result, known North Korean exports to China dropped 87 percent between 2018 and 2019. Similarly to the bridge opened this week, the one announced in 2019 was reportedly completed two years before its opening. Its completion before the pandemic allowed for its use, however — at least before North Korea’s aggressive lockdowns in 2020.
The North Korean dictatorship effectively shut all the country’s borders following news of the novel pathogen spreading in the country. According to General Robert B. Abrams, commander of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) at the time, Kim was believed to have issued “shoot-to-kill orders” along the Yalu River and other international borders, preventing anyone from entering the country.
As the pandemic spread, Kim Jong-un appeared to distance his country from China and simultaneously pursue closer relations with neighboring Russia. Kim took to calling Vladimir Putin his “closest comrade” and signed a mutual defense agreement with Russia in 2024 that resulted in the deployment of North Korean troops to fight in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kim and Xi, meanwhile, kept a distance for years.
Xi finally visited North Korea in June of this year, touting the need to restore “trust” between the two countries and using similar language to Li Qiang’s in inaugurating the New Yalu River Bridge. While Xi and Kim appear to be thawing their relations, Kim has continued to prioritize Russia over China in his foreign policy — a move some observers believe has resulted in increased defense technology support from Moscow.