Sino-NK

The recent APEC 2025 meetings in Gyeongju, South Korea were a high-stakes opportunity for Chinese President Xi Jinping to lower trade tensions, hold talks with South Korean counterparts, and benefit the PRC economy.

At home, Xi remains engaged in a wide-ranging anti-corruption campaign. This effort was given a renewed impetus earlier this year when the Chinese president declared corruption “the biggest threat to our party”, and has implications for Chinese Communist Party officials engaged in expanding trade with both South Korea and the DPRK.

In nearby Liaoning province which borders the DPRK, Xi has demonstrated a marked skepticism towards customs officials. This short essay deals with customs and anti-corruption policy in Liaoning (a topic which Sino-NK has previously covered here, here, and here).

In mid-March 2025, the Dalian port head of customs Liu Dali (刘大立) was announced as under investigation. Liu’s portfolio included Dandong, China’s primary port of trade with North Korea. Dalian has customs management over Dandong since both are located in Liaoning , with the former the largest port and maritime hub in the province and the whole of northeastern China.

In the official statement on Liu’s arrest, it was revealed that a meeting focused on rooting out corruption from customs bureaus had taken place “not long prior”, possibly in February 2025, at which it was stated:

The anti-corruption campaign in Chinese customs bureaus continues to be both severe and complex. The task of eradicating the conditions and the breeding grounds of corruption [腐败滋生土壤] remains demanding and burdensome. This is particularly evident in the high number of disciplinary and legal violations, and the appearance of prominent problems of corruption intertwined with new forms of hidden corruption.

The speaker was Wang Lin, of the CMC Discipline Inspection Commission, the military branch of the Party’s anti-corruption system, who also pointed out links between smuggling and corruption, and the efficacy of monitoring and disrupting both forms of illegal activity. Recent reports indicate a wider Chinese crackdown on smuggling routes to and from North Korea.

The target of the investigation in Dalian, Liu Dali, is a notable case of an ethnic minority official whose rise in the CCP hierarchy now appears to be over. An ethnic Manchu born in 1969, Liu was a Party member who had previously held similar posts in Lhasa and Shantou.

The Liberty Times (Ziyou Ribao), a mainland-critical newspaper in Taiwan, drew a link between Liu’s arrest and the fall of Sun Yuning (孙玉宁), his predecessor in the Dalian customs post back in 2018 who had since risen to the vice-chair of the PRC Customs Bureau.

Sun had been removed from his post in April 2024 as part of an intensified anti-corruption campaign around Customs in recent years, with 294 cases filed against customs officials in 2022 alone. A week after Liu was removed, Sun’s investigation concluded, and his forthcoming sentencing was announced.

Since Liu’s downfall, customs officials in Dandong have been continually mobilised to be mindful of national security, and have been encouraged to work regularly with colleagues in local law enforcement agencies.

In the aftermath of the APEC bilateral meetings between Chinese and South Korean delegations, the outlook for growth of South Korean economic ties with Liaoning seems strong. Liaoning and South Korea had over $9 billion USD in bilateral trade in 2023, making the ROK second only in importance to Japan as an external trade partner. In 2024, Liaoning province sent its chairman Hao Peng (郝鹏) and a delegation to Seoul for three days of active discussions about further broadening these economic channels.

As Liaoning’s economic ties to South Korea deepen, and trade with North Korea continues via Dandong, look for Xi Jinping and his adjutants to keep the pressure on at the customs level. As became clear in 2016 during the Hongxiang affair in Dandong, CCP anti-corruption campaigns in Liaoning have the potential for significant overlap with bilateral trade activity with the Koreas.