China-N. Korea trade rises 30% in 1st half of 2025

A cargo train from North Korea arrives in the Chinese border city of Dandong, Liaoning Province, on July 6, 2025

China’s trade with North Korea in the first half of 2025 rose about 30 percent from a year earlier, official data showed Friday, indicating a recovery in bilateral economic ties even though Pyongyang has been boosting its relations with Moscow.

In the January-June period of 2025, the total value of China’s trade with North Korea amounted to some $1.26 billion. Beijing is Pyongyang’s largest trading partner and longtime economic benefactor.

Pyongyang’s main export items to China include wigs and artificial eyelashes, with cheap North Korean labor processing raw materials delivered from Chinese dealers and sending market-ready products back.

Major exports from China to North Korea include plastic goods used to manufacture carpets and wallpaper as well as furniture and bedding. These items are believed to have been used for the development of housing and factories in the country.

Shipments of Chinese rice and fertilizers to the neighboring country have also resumed, according to diplomatic sources.

Bilateral trade exceeded $6.5 billion in 2013 but began dropping sharply in 2018 after U.N. Security Council resolutions were adopted in 2017 against Pyongyang over its continued nuclear tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Meanwhile, North Korea has dispatched workers to factories in north-eastern China since late last year in possible violation of a U.N. resolution that bans such a practice. However, it remains unknown whether Beijing has issued work visa for those laborers and how long they are allowed to stay in the country.

Dozens of North Korean technicians have visited China since May for training programs in such sectors as transportation, energy and agriculture, according to diplomatic sources. Pyongyang’s dispatch of unpaid trainees abroad does not violate the U.N. sanction, they said.