North Korea has opened up bridges to Russia and China – in which direction will it go?

Residents sit at a viewing platform overlooking the newly opened New Yalu River Bridge Photograph: Florence Lo/Reuters

For more than a decade, local Chinese residents pilloried it as nothing more than an empty bridge that led to a North Korean vegetable patch on the other side.

Fast forward 12 years and dozens of trucks are now traversing the bridge linking China to North Korea, boosting trade for the reclusive regime. But it has also triggered concern that it could intensify a struggle for influence over the North between Beijing and the region’s other major power, Russia.