Xi Jinping set to meet Kim Jong-un in North Korea, as China seeks to revitalise relationship | North Korea
Xi Jinping visited North Korea on Monday for a two-day trip, his first in nearly seven years, as the Chinese president seeks to revive ties with his junior ally.
Xi is expected to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang. North Korea is China’s only official treaty ally, but their relations have been strained in recent years by a virtual freeze on trade during the Covid-19 pandemic and Pyongyang’s increasingly close relationship with Russia.
Xi’s visit comes ahead of the 65th anniversary of the signing of the friendship and mutual assistance treaty between China and North Korea. This agreement is still the only defense agreement China has made with another country.
Chinese and North Korean troops fought side by side against South Korea in the Korean war in the early 1950s. But North Korea and Russia have a much closer history of military cooperation. North Korea had sent more than 10,000 troops to fight on Russia’s behalf in the Ukraine war, and in 2024 Moscow and Pyongyang signed a mutual defense agreement.
“There’s a lot of exaggerated praise in North Korean propaganda for the closeness that’s maintained by fighting alongside Russia, whereas with China it’s a bit nostalgic,” said John Delury, a senior fellow at the Asia Society.
“They don’t want to let North Korea’s closeness with Russia outweigh its ties with China by too much.”
Xi, Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin stood side by side at a major military parade in Beijing in September last year. This event heralded a show of power by the so-called leaders of the autocrat-led new world order. But behind the scenes, the men strike a delicate balance to protect each of their personal interests. More than Russia and North Korea, China wants to maintain a strategic relationship with the United States, at least in the field of trade.
Xi’s visit to Pyongyang comes less than a month after US president Donald Trump visited Beijing for a highly anticipated summit framed by China as re-stabilizing the fraught US-China relationship. Although concrete results were few in the Trump-Xi summit, the US president later said he had discussed North Korea with Xi.
There is some speculation that Trump may ask Xi to deliver a message to Kim. Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants to meet with the North Korean leader again.
In recent years, Beijing and Washington have broken away from their previously united front in opposing North Korea’s nuclear armament. When Xi and Kim met in Beijing last year, it was not the first time their official statements mentioned denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and although the White House said Trump and Xi “confirmed their common goal of denuclearizing North Korea” after their meeting in May, Beijing did not confirm that statement.
On Sunday, Kim’s sister Kim Yo-jong, who wields considerable power within the regime, called claims that Xi and Trump discussed denuclearization “false.”
Last week, North Korea unveiled a new nuclear materials production factory, and Kim called for an “exponential” expansion of the country’s atomic arsenal.
A bigger priority for Xi than nuclear talks will be defending China’s own security interests in Northeast Asia, most likely the threat it sees from Japan.
Xi is understood to have been unusually lively as he discussed what China sees as Japan’s increasing militarism with Trump and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who visited Beijing in January. Japan rejects the claim that a more proactive defense policy amounts to what China describes as “new militarism.”
Delury said any cooperation between Beijing and Pyongyang on Japan would be more rhetorical than practical.
The visit is also important as it is Xi’s foreign trip. It has hosted a number of world leaders in recent months and now travels less internationally than before the pandemic. His willingness to travel to North Korea reflects both China’s proximity to its ally — a short flight or even train ride away from Beijing — and the importance of the bilateral relationship.
William Yang, a senior analyst at the Crisis Group, said: “In light of North Korea’s recent wave of missile tests, including the announcement of the successful testing of AI-guided missiles, Xi likely sees the need to come to Pyongyang in person to prevent escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.”
Delury said Xi’s goal “is to not let North Korea drift too far out of China’s orbit,” which is something Beijing will always be concerned about.
