China's Xi in North Korea for rare visit

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AFP) — China’s President Xi Jinping made a rare visit to North Korea on Monday, where he proclaimed a willingness to bring ties to “new heights” during a meeting with Kim Jong Un.

Xi’s trip to Pyongyang is his first since 2019 and comes after he hosted a series of world leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in Beijing.

Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan were warmly greeted at the airport by Kim in a lavish welcome ceremony complete with a red-carpet military salute and cheering crowds, according to Chinese state media.

Some streets in the capital also displayed North Korean and Chinese flags side by side.

Kim, whose country has been historically reliant on China, has drawn closer to Moscow in recent years while expanding his country’s nuclear weapons program.

He boosted an alliance with Putin after sending troops to fight alongside Russian forces against Ukraine.

But China, Washington’s chief geopolitical rival, has been North Korea’s main trading partner by far for decades and a key source of diplomatic and economic support for a country hit by international sanctions.

Xi told Kim during talks on Monday that he was willing to work together to bring their countries’ relations to “new heights,” state news agency Xinhua reported.

The two sides should strengthen exchanges “in diplomacy, law enforcement, and the military,” Xi said. “No matter how the international situation changes … the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK will not change.”

‘Irreversible’

While the two countries are quick to talk up their friendship, North Korea’s commitment to its nuclear program has been a thorn in the relationship.

Beijing has said it wants to see a denuclearized Korean peninsula, but North Korea has repeatedly declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state — particularly after Kim and Trump’s 2019 summit collapsed over Pyongyang’s weapons program and sanctions relief.

China-North Korea exchanges faced a further blow soon after, when Pyongyang shuttered its borders during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Xi’s trip comes just weeks after he held talks with Trump, during which the White House said the leaders “confirmed their shared goal to denuclearize North Korea.”

But leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister said on the eve of the visit that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program was “the line of no retreat.”

Minseon Ku, a diplomacy professor at DePaul University, told AFP that “Beijing probably has accepted North Korea as a nuclear state,” but Xi “will probably tell Kim that China wants stability more than anything.”

Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Asia Center, also said Beijing is shifting towards “underwriting regime durability” rather than seeking to coerce North Korea into denuclearization.

“China’s broader regional strategy benefits from a stable, heavily armed and aligned buffer state that absorbs U.S. and allied military bandwidth,” he told AFP.

Xi last met Kim in September, when he invited the North Korean leader and Putin to a military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

North Korea is the only country with an official, binding military alliance with China.

Counterweight

North Korea could serve as a useful counterweight to U.S. partners in the region, including South Korea and Japan, analysts said.

Long-frosty China-Japan ties have deteriorated since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a security hawk, suggested last year that Tokyo might intervene militarily in any Chinese attempt to take self-ruled Taiwan.

“As China’s international standing rises, Beijing is likely seeking to draw Pyongyang more actively into its diplomatic orbit,” said Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University.

Some analysts say the summit could be Xi’s way of countering Russia’s growing influence over North Korea, but DePaul’s Ku noted that “overall, Moscow is not a major power like China.”

“Moscow-Pyongyang power relations are more equal than Beijing-Pyongyang; Moscow needs Kim for their war in Ukraine as much as Kim needs technology sharing and food from Russia,” she said.

Residents living close to the North Korean border expressed hope for greater openness from Pyongyang.

South Korean tour guide Jun Sang-gab, 65, said he hopes that “North Korea opens its economy” and follows China’s development model.

“If they (the North) establish themselves economically, there won’t be any incidents like armed unification or war” on the Korean peninsula, he told AFP.

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By Agence France-Presse