An Upcountry Tour Along the Sino-Korean Border: More “Broken Bridges” and a Boat Trip on the Yalu

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Travel

From our mid-city hotel in Dandong we took a tour upcountry following the river road (S319) into Hushanzhen and beyond. At the northern outskirts of the city we stopped for our first glimpse at the Korean side of Yalu Hé. The spot we stopped at contained a memorial to the Korean War sacrifices (two statues of heroic Chinese servicemen) and a stall hawking the usual military-themed momentos and souvenirs. The crossing point here to North Korea was fairly narrow and was marked by the barely existing remnants of an old wooden bridge (the bridge itself was long gone with a few rotting planks visible where the posts of the bridge once stood). Little could be seen on the other side, a wasteland of grasses and vast meadows.

“No man’s water”: barbed-wire borderland

At various stretches of the river road we were face-to-face with the barbed wire fence that demarcates the border between the two different communist countries. At some points the two states were separated by only about 30-40m of Yalu water (especially on the Binhai Highway stretch).

After a mandatory stop at Tiger Mountain to see the Hushan Great Wall (see separate blog), we ventured on to lunch at a pleasant roadside restaurant, one that specialises in the tourist trade, shuffling bus loads of lunching tourists in and out swiftly to capitalise on high turnover profitability.

Further up the river we stopped again at another bridge, this one with stronger historical overtones of the Korean conflict. This bridge bore some similarities with the famous Dandong Broken Bridge in that it was also a disconnected structure. From the Chinese shoreline it looked like a normal bridge, but once on it you soon realised that it jutted out only about two-thirds of the way to the opposite mainland, ending suddenly and abruptly in the middle of the Yalu river! Many, many Chinese tourists took the stroll along the length of the abridged bridge reading the Korean War information boards on the side as they went. Having reached the point where the bridge ended, it was obligatory for all to pull out phone cameras and take photos of themselves with the North Korean remote countryside as a backdrop.

In what seemed almost conspiratorial, the North Koreans on the other side had truncated their bridge in a similar manner (although what there was of it was not as long as the Chinese one). I have no notion as to why these two sides of the bridge don’t connect or why they were at some stage severed, but I’m sure there’s a back story to it, if I could avail myself of the necessary Mandarin.

The site has plenty of tourists stalls, as well as an amicable fellow dressed in Korean War era uniform with a blackened face and a rifle who provided ‘atmosphere’ for the historic site, making himself available to tourists for ‘authentic’ looking photos. Next to the bridge there was a wharf from where we took a long boat trip out into the river. The boat charted a course around the waters veering into North Korean territorial waters…we got close enough to the Korean mainland to make out farms, the occasional building, a handful of motor vehicles, but saw precious few actual North Koreans.

Our boat passed a desolate fishing boat reeling in its net in the windy waters and eventually disembarked at an another point down the river where we were entertained by an all-female music concert which included both Chinese singers in traditional costumes and a girl pop band with members dressed in a kind of retro-Sixties’ outfit. Back at the wharf we returned to the bus for the long drive back down the S319 through Kuandian County, reaching the outskirts of Dandong just in time to join the afternoon gridlock on Binjiang East Road.

Dandong’s Historic Bridge to North Korea: A Fleeting Peak into Kim’s Kingdom

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National politics, Travel

Dandong in China’s North-eastern Liaoning province is 541 miles from Beijing, but only some 105 miles from Pyongyang, North Korea’s seldom seen capital. But Dandong is much, much closer to North Korean soil as a visit to the most eastern city in China’s Dong-Bei will confirm. From Dandong’s shoreline on the Yalu River, the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of Korea (PDRK) is just the distance of one short bridge away.

We, like millions of Chinese visitors from other parts of the vast country, paid the admission fee (¥30 per head) to tour the bridge open to the public✹. This bridge is no ordinary bridge even by Chinese standards, the bridge is truncated on the Korean side as a result of war damage. This is the famous Yalu River Broken Bridge. Built by Imperial Japan in 1911, the half-way section of the bridge was destroyed by an American B-29 bomber during the Korean War. The bridge has been deliberately kept un-repaired since for its Cold War propaganda points-scoring (and the eastern sections of the bridge subsequently dismantled by the North Koreans).

As you walk up the stairs from the entrance, you are bombarded with another bit of transparent Chinese propaganda extolling the patriotic homeland – a stirring large multi-figure set of stern-faced statues, heroic Chinese servicemen striking an ever-vigilant pose, on the lookout for foreign “enemies of the state” (there’s also another patriotic military wall sculpture on the front (street) side of the bridge.

At night the Broken Bridge is at its most visually striking as the bridge cascading into a revolving spectrum of colours. Climbing on to the bridge itself (draped in Chinese flags) during the day allows visitors, some in guide-led tour groups, more opportunity to study the bridge’s intricacies in detail. The swing bridge signage contains detailed information explaining its unusual engineering specifics, a “Unique Horizontal-Opening Beam Bridge” (a special thrill for civil engineering tragics and graduating Lego enthusiasts alike).

The bridge was very well attended on the afternoon/evening we visited, everyone making their way to the famously truncated section of the bridge to survey the damage close-up. The end-point, with people jostling for prime position, is also the best spot to peer into the “Hermit Kingdom” of North Korea, home of the colourfully unstable President Kim. Just across from here is the “ghost town” like city of Sinuiji…at night bereft of lights, and during the day scarcely little to be seen, a scattering of seeming abandoned grey old buildings, a strange orange dome-shaped structure that catches the eye and a dilapidated Ferris wheel, and precious little else. Eerily it is seemingly also bereft of observable human life. An added nationalistic touch for very many of the Chinese visitors was to snap a selfie with both the red Chinese flag and the Sinuiji “still-life” backdrop.

Of course back in Chinese Dandong you can find a North Korean presence right here. Several of the restaurants in riverside Binjang Middle Road are North Korean (run perhaps by economic refugees who had once taken the chance to hop over the Yalu at some point to find more profitable trade and opportunity on the Chinese side).

______________________________________________________________________________

✹ there are in fact two bridges in Dandong, sitting side by side, that span the river to North Korea – the second bridge, the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, is a traffic bridge for (a restricted number of) sanctioned vehicles making the journey to Pyongyang

The West Indies Federation: A Failed Attempt at Forging a Dominion Within the British Commonwealth (Part 2)

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Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, Racial politics, Regional History

Many observers of the abject collapse of the West Indies Federation (WIF) in 1962, looking to particularise the reasons for it (and viewing it from outside Jamaica), tend to point the finger squarely at that largest of British Caribbean islands and more precisely at the role of the powerhouse politician of Jamaica, Norman Manley.

Manley as chief minister of the colony of Jamaica and founder of the Jamaican People’s National Party (PNP) at the onset of the Caribbean Federation was in a position to exert a centrally prominent role and even a guiding influence over the shaping of the new multi-island federation. Manley however chose not to put himself forward as candidate for the WIF’s prime ministership✲, or even to stand for election to the new parliament as an MP. And given that Manley was revered within Jamaica as a national hero/father figure, his non-participation in the fledgling WIF, certainly would have dissuaded other Jamaicans from embracing the cause of union [Kwame Nantambu, ‘W. I. Federation: Failure From the Start’, (art. updated 26-Oct-2014), www.tricenter.com].

⇣ Norman Washington Manley

Federalism as an essential stage to independence
Manley’s backing off from active involvement in the WIF at its formative stage was not an indication per se of his opposition to federation in the Caribbean. Manley had long advocated his support for federalism – but for him (as for others) it was a necessary stage on the road to achieving national independence for Jamaica. As he unequivocally stated in 1947: “I cannot imagine what we should be federating about if it is not to achieve the beginning of nationhood” [‘Jamaica’s Brexit: Remembering the West Indies Federation’, (Stephen Vasciannie), Jamaica Observer, 25-Jun-2016, www.jamaicaobserver.com].

Two unit ten-pins fall and the Federation splinters
Jamaica’s and Manley’s disaffection with the Federation, and with the perceived direction it was heading in, did not abate over the next two years. In 1961, under pressure from the opposition Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) Manley put the issue to a referendum of the Jamaican people. The wily JLP opposition leader Alexander Bustamante managed to persuade some of the constituents that the referendum was a choice between federalism with independence and independence for Jamaica. The vote came down 54.1% to 45.9% in favour of exiting the WIF (only just over 60% of eligible Jamaican voters cast a ballot)…Bustamante’s reward for publicly taking a consistent line against federation was his election in 1962 as the first prime minister of an independent Jamaica [ibid.].

⇡ Eric Williams, 1st PM of independent Trinidad & Tobago

Jamaica’s departure from the WIF was a crippling blow to it, but it was Trinidad and Tobago which applied the coup de grace. Trinidad’s leader, Eric Williams, responding to Jamaica’s exit with his famous aphorism “one from ten equals nought!”, followed suit, withdrawing Trinidad and Tobago from the Federation as well. Without the two most economically advanced islands the WIF was simply not viable and the Federation collapsed abruptly in January 1962.

Jamaica was the linchpin that determined the fate of the WIF but there was more behind its eventual opt-out than simply the political jockeying of rivals Manley and Bustamante for power…there were a complicated set of considerations for Jamaica in appraising it’s role in the Federation.

The ‘exceptionalism’ of Jamaica and Trinidad within the island-countries of the West Indies

In the late 1950s nearly all the West Indian islands making up the WIF were poor, beset by unemployment and woefully lacking in development. Jamaica and Trinidad however were the economic exceptions. With the advantage of comparatively larger land masses and significantly larger populations, both colonies were able to attract foreign capital and establish export markets (Jamaica with its discovery and production of bauxite, and Trinidad with its oil). Their spurts in economic growth set them apart from the other eight territorial units of the WIF. This stark disparity in resources and economic progress would work against the Federation’s efforts to unify it’s members [‘Norman Manley and the West Indies Federation’, part two (the referendum) (David Tenner) (Narkive Newsgroup Archive, 2004), www.soc.history.what-if.narkive.com]. The differing levels of development across the southern Caribbean archipelago was a handicap to the objection of integrating the parts of the Federation❂.

“Two rival conceptions”: Trinidadian centralism v Jamaican localism

Over the course of its existence two competing views of the WIF’s raison d’être took centre stage – succinctly encapsulated by one of the antagonists (Eric Williams) himself: Federation as a “weak, central government” (Jamaica) and Federation as a “strong, Central power” (Trinidad) [Vasciannie, op.cit.]. Williams and T & T also harboured fears and misgivings about the direction the WIF was heading (though Jamaica’s and Manley’s misgivings were more demonstrative). At the heart of Jamaica’s position was that no “extraordinary powers” granted the Federation should encroach on its national sovereignty. Being more wealthier than the others Jamaica was particularly concerned with the scope and application of federal taxes…Manley believed that they would inevitably rise and therefore hit Jamaica the hardest.

Jamaica’s antipathy to the WIF centralist model drew criticism from the other member-states…Albert Gomes, first chief minister of Trinidad and Tobago accused Jamaican politicians of a power-grab, manipulating the Federation, making regular demands with the purpose of supplanting “Whitehall with Kingston✥” [Nantambu, loc.cit.].

All of the eastern Caribbean islands advocated a strong role for the central authority, but T & T chief minister Williams was the WIF’s strongest voice. Seeking dominion status for the British Caribbean islands Williams in 1956 laid out the predicament for its small countries: “The units of government are getting larger and larger…federation is inescapable if the British Caribbean territories are to cease to parade themselves to the twentieth-century world as eighteenth-century anachronisms” [Vasciannie, op.cit.]. This echoed the UK’s position at the time of the 1947 Montego Bay Conference: union was the only way the “small and isolated, separate communities could achieve and maintain full self-government” [Narkine, loc.cit.].

⇡ Kingston 🇯🇲 (1960s)

The eastern Caribbean islands’ push to make WIF more centralised kept tensions between it and Jamaica at a high point. The centralisation issue was at its most polemical on the question of the Federation’s tax provisions. PM Adams tried to run the line that federal taxing power could be applied retrospectively, much to the consternation of the Jamaicans⌖. In fact the scope of federal authority was intended to be quite limited (eg, allocating grants under the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts, assisting the University College of the West Indies)⍟. The bulk of government functions were allocated to the territorial units [Vasciannie, op.cit.].

The internal migration issue

Another revenue worry of Jamaica’s was the Federation’s call for a customs union and freedom of movement between the member islands…some of the poorer islands tended to be overpopulated (eg, Grenada, St Kitts), so Jamaica already with population pressures and wanted to avoid the possibility of it’s island becoming a “dumping ground” for other islands’ unemployed surplus – with a resultant diminution of Jamaican quality of life [Nantambu, loc.cit.]. The T& T government was similarly concerned about the danger of it’s territory’s labour market being flooded by internal migrants. Conversely, the other economically less advanced units like Barbados (with higher employment) welcomed the free movement of labour across the various units [Vasciannie, op.cit.].

Jamaica – the West Indies ‘outlier’

Another factor in Jamaica’s failure to embrace federalism in 1958 was geography. The island’s location in the west of the Caribbean put it a long distance from the other British colonies all in the east. This sense of isolation and removal from Federal power was compounded by the WIF capital being located not in Jamaica but in Trinidad.

When individual independence did come to the West Indian islands, some like the Turks and Caicos opted to remain a British overseas territorial dependency ⇣

Geography and nationalism

This “tyranny of distance” played a role in undermining WI federalism in a general way which affected more than just Jamaica. The spread-out nature of the British group of Caribbean colonies made for difficulties of inter-island communication…before Federation West Indians didn’t have much contact with peoples from other islands. Antiguans and Dominicans and St Lucians, etc, tended to identify with their own islands rather than with the Caribbean as a whole□, this bred insularity in mindsets. Home island identity was what informed their nationalistic feeling. The populations thus never arrived at a sense of ‘oneness’ about the Anglophone Caribbean◙. Consequently, the essential prerequisite for unifying the Federation, a “substantial groundswell of popular support”, failed to materialise [ibid.].

The triumph of parochialism – self-interest rules OK!

Ultimately, this inherent disunity sowed the seeds of the Federation’s dissolution. Once it was established, no one wanted to really get behind the new structure, one’s own vested interests was paramount to most island politicians. Those who held a post in unit territorial politics at the time of Federation were faced with making a choice between seeking office in the federal parliament or retaining what they had at island level – and particularly if they were a minister in their island government, this was a lot to risk losing (Manley for instance stayed put, in part at least, because he didn’t want to afford any opportunities to the JLP under Bustamante to regain the ascendency on the island and wrest control of Jamaican politics from his party) [Coore, D. (1999). THE ROLE OF THE INTERNAL DYNAMICS OF JAMAICAN POLITICS ON THE COLLAPSE OF THE FEDERATION. Social and Economic Studies, 48(4), 65-82. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27865166 ; Nantambu, loc.cit.].

⇡ WIF crest – motto refuted: a federation without unity

This duality in Caribbean politics extended to the structures of public administration. When the policy-makers formulated the new Federation constitution, the old individual constitutions of the colonies were retained in a parallel arrangement… the new federal constitution was simply “fastened on to the various existing structures of government territorial units” [CB Bourne, ‘The Federation of the West Indies’, University of Toronto Law Journal, Vol. XIII, No 2, 1960]. Another fundamental problem for the territorial units was that, as British colonies, they held only limited legislative power under the Federation.

Shortcomings of leadership

The WIF’s central government has been described as virtually powerless and its leadership ‘timid’ [Cynthia Barrow-Giles, Introduction to Caribbean Politics ((2002)]. Infighting between island leaders (eg, Williams v Manley) was constant…the nearly four years of the Federation’s life was characterised by seemingly endless discussions of what it should be about, include, etc. (Federation premier Adams likened the task of governing to trying to build a house on shifting sand) [Hugh Wooding, ‘The Failure of the West Indies Federation’, Melbourne University Law Review, July 1966 (Vol.5), www.austlil.edu.au].


PostScript:Successor organisations to the WIF
The moribund West Indies Federation was eventually replaced initially by the Caribbean Free Trade Association (Carifta) in the Sixties which in turn was succeeded by the Caribbean Commission – known as CARICOM, founded in 1973. CARICOM was established to achieve economic integration in the region, operate a (CARICOM) single market, undertake special projects in the less developed countries, handle regional trade disputes, etc. It has 15 full and associate members including countries in Central and South America.

⇡ Grantley Adams of Barbados (Federation PM)

••➖•➖•➖•➖•➖•➖•➖•➖•➖•➖•➖•➖•➖•➖••
✲ the vacuum left by Manley was filled by Barbados chief minister Grantley Adams who was selected the Federation’s inaugural PM…with no consensus between the Federation’s different units, the task was a Herculean one in any light, however Adams lacked the stature and clout of Manley and was largely ineffectual in heading the WIF

❂ a frequent criticism of Manley concerned the WIF’s perceived power imbalance resulting in the “85%” (Jamaica and T & T) being dominated by the “15%” (the remainder of the territorial units). Manley was unhappy with the Federal arrangements, believing that the voting powers, the parliamentary representation and the cabinet membership did not reflect Jamaica’s larger population and economic standing [Vasciannie, op.cit.]

✥ the Jamaican capital

⌖ the constitution actually prevented WIF from imposing direct taxes on members for a period of five years

⍟ expanding tertiary education in the Caribbean by opening a second campus of the University College of the West Indies at St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago

□ trade between the islands had been sporadic [Nantambu, loc.cit.]

◙ only in one arena, on the sporting field, has this sense of ‘oneness’ ever shone through…the West Indies cricket team (and community), dominant in world cricket during the Seventies and Eighties, has been able to unify cohesively and successfully as a constructed ‘national’ identity

Enduring West Indian unity – the WI cricket flag

The West Indies Federation: A Failed Attempt at Forging a Dominion Within the British Commonwealth (Part 1)

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Comparative politics, Economic history, Inter-ethnic relations, Racial politics, Regional History

The 1950s was a fashionable period for forming international federations in different parts of the globe. Nineteen Fifty-Eight saw the creation of two competing federations of national groupings in the Middle East (both short-lived unions), see my previous blog post (March 2019), Competing Strands of Arab Unity During the Cold War: UAR and the Arab Federation. The British West Indies Federation (BWIF), also coming into being in 1958, was another ephemeral, unsuccessful but very different effort at a regional confederation.

An idea with a long shelf-life

The germ of the idea of a federation of Caribbean islands is far from being a recent development, even in historical terms. Proposals and discussions about Britain’s Caribbean territories coming under collective control goes back as least as far as 1671 [Glassner, Martin Ira. “CARICOM AND THE FUTURE OF THE CARIBBEAN.” Publication Series (Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers), vol. 6, 1977, pp. 111–117. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25765588].

In the 19th century there were various attempts at “governor-sharing” of different British West Indian possessions, eg, the Windward and Leeward Islands had a sort of federated arrangement from the 1870s to the 1950s✲. The Crown also appointed a governor to take joint control of Jamaica and British Honduras…the same thing happened at one point with Barbados and the Windwards. These constructed entities did not necessarily have satisfactory or happy outcomes, the last of these imposed ‘unions’ was followed by the Confederation Riots of 1876 in Barbados (a protest by local black labour against the sub-par wages paid by the white planter class) [Kwame Nantambu, ‘W. I. Federation: Failure From the Start’, (art. updated 26-Oct-2014), www.tricenter.com].

In the early 1930s a conference containing “liberal and radical politicians” from Trinidad, Barbados and the Leewards and the Windwards, meeting in Dominica, resolved that federation was the best way forward. Their proposals to the West Indies Closer Union Commissions were however rejected on the grounds that “public opinion was not yet ripe for federation” [Hughes, C. (1958). ‘Experiments Towards Closer Union in the British West Indies’. The Journal of Negro History, 43(2), 85-104. doi:10.2307/2715591; Nantambu, loc.cit.].

Photo: Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (bitujamaica.org)

Agrarian class conflict: Quasi-slavery and organised labour militancy

In the 1930s a wave of grass-roots disturbances, riots and strikes, emanating from a burgeoning and increasingly militant labour movement, resonated throughout the Caribbean colonies. Britain, all-too-aware of the dangers of growing antipathy to its colonial rule, a scenario also playing out dramatically in British India at the time, put out ‘feelers’ to the West Indian political elites for their interest in a federation. A 1947 conference indicated that all of the colonies (with the exceptions of the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands) were in favour of a ‘loose’ association. The British government’s stated aim at this point was “the development of a federation which would help the colonies to achieve economic self-sufficiency, as well as international status as individual states” [ibid.].

Framework of the WI Federation

The UK parliament passed the British Caribbean Federation Act in 1956 (with the Federation to come into existence beginning of ’58). The framework of the West Indian Federation (originally named the Caribbean Federation) was to have an executive comprising a (British appointed) governor-general (Lord Hailes), a prime minister and cabinet. The parliament was a bi-cameral one and the federal constitution was based principally on the Australian model, allowing for a “very large measure of internal self-government” [Statement by the Earl of Perth (UK minister of state for colonial affairs), 29-Jul-1957 (WI Federation: Order in Council 1957), Hansard 1803-2005, www.api.parliament.uk].Flag of the West Indies Federation

1958 Member states of BWIF:

Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla, St Lucia, St Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago✥.
The ten constituent territories signing on to the Federation comprised a total geographical area of 20,239 km and a population of around 3.2 million.

A good theoretical idea?

On paper there was a lot to be gained from a confederation of regional islands in the Caribbean Sea✪ – seemingly for both the coloniser and the decolonised. From Britain’s position, there was the cost and efficiency angle. Federation of the parts supposed that Britain and Whitehall would deal with ONE political entity (the whole), rather than having to cope with eight to ten territories, thus also reducing costs for the parent government. A single central federation of many parts eliminated the need for duplication of services, thus it would result in more efficient economic and social planning [GANZERT, F. (1953). ‘British West Indian Federation’. World Affairs, 116(4), 112-114. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20668810].

For the BWIF government, more advantageous economies of scale could secure better prices for its peoples’ commodities. Enhanced prosperity of the country would serve to head-off social unrest within the island societies. Lastly, a single political entity could foster and facilitate the desired objective of democracy more smoothly [ibid.].

Approaching Federation: Confrontational rather than consensual

Unfortunately for the prospects of the Federation venture, multiple problems quickly surfaced, not least the difficulty of finding common areas of agreement among the member states, these factors beset BWIF even before the Federation came into existence. Deciding where to locate the new Federation capital itself proved problematic. Early on there was a move to make it Grenada (St George’s Town), but Jamaica and Barbados objected to awarding it to one of the smaller islands. Jamaica and Barbados also objected to Trinidad as the site but the island was chosen in preference to either of them. Even after that was determined, there was issues…the federal capital was intended to be Chaguaramas (Trinidad) but the snag here was its availability, part of Chaguaramas housed a US naval base. Ultimately, due to this complication, the Trinidad capital Port of Spain became the de facto BWIF capital [‘West Indies Federation’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].Red arrow = de jure federal capital || White arrow = de facto federal capital

Things didn’t improve after the Federation came into effect for a host of reasons – I will explore these factors in some detail in the second part of this blog topic: The West Indies Federation: A Failed Attempt at Forging a Dominion Within the British Commonwealth (Part 2).

Footnote: The Canada/BWIF relationship
From the early, nascent rumblings of a desire for self-government in the Caribbean, the Canadian Confederation was a model examined by pro-federation West Indians. Individual islands in the Caribbean had even speculated at different times on the merits of joining Canada as a province. At least twice during the 20th century the Canadian parliament considered legally annexing the Turks and Caicos Islands however this never eventuated [‘Turks and Caicos Islands’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Aside from this particular colony, federation within Canada doesn’t seem to have been a serious proposition for either side …though relations between the Federation and Canada remained close [ibid.]. 🇨🇦

◥▅◢▅◣◥◤◢▅◣◥▅◤◢▅◣◥▅◤◥▅◤◥◤▅◤

✲ described by Hugh Springer as “weak and ineffectual” attempts at unifying the group of islands [Springer, H. (1962). Federation in the Caribbean: An Attempt that Failed. International Organization, 16(4), 758-775. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2705214]

✥ the UK mainland territories of British Guiana and British Honduras declined to join the Federation
✪ for a start the various scattered island entities shared a number of commonalities – a colonial history, the English language, a familiarity with British institutions, etc.