Last week yours truly came back from the Chinese city of Yanji, located in the near-vicinity of the Sino-Korean border. Over the last decade, such trips have typically been a part of my annual schedule, but this time exactly two years had passed since I’d been in China’s remote north-east.

Every trip to Yanji and its adjacent areas is useful, and every visit offers an opportunity to see what is changing. This time, the transformation was especially remarkable: for two decades the area has served as the second largest center of economic interaction with North Korea (the first such center,