China’s Xi to visit North Korea after meetings with Trump and Putin

With a flourish of warm rhetoric and hard-edged diplomacy, China’s President Xi Jinping set off for North Korea praising what he called an “invincible friendship” with Pyongyang, embarking on his first trip abroad this year after hosting successive summits in Beijing.

For decades, China — Washington’s principal geopolitical rival — has remained by far North Korea’s biggest trading partner, as well as a crucial source of diplomatic and economic backing for the sanctions-hit nation of about 26 million people.

The visit marks Mr Xi’s first trip to North Korea since 2019 and follows separate talks in the Chinese capital with US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It comes at a time when North Korea’s nuclear negotiations with Washington remain stalled.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Friday that the two leaders would “exchange views on bilateral relations and issues of common concern” and “make greater contributions to regional and even world peace”.

The White House said last month that Mr Xi and Mr Trump ‘confirmed their shared goal to denuclearise North Korea’

Yet just one day before Mr Xi’s arrival, leader Kim Jong Un’s influential sister declared that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme was “the line of no retreat”.

China has “always prioritised stability and is currently having to manage its relations and differences with the US”, Minseon Ku, a diplomacy professor at DePaul University, told AFP.

“Beijing probably has accepted North Korea as a nuclear state,” but Xi “will probably tell Kim that China wants stability more than anything”.

Elevated status

North Korea has repeatedly described itself as an “irreversible” nuclear state since the collapse of the 2019 summit between Mr Kim and Mr Trump, which fell apart over disagreements on denuclearisation steps and sanctions relief.

Mr Trump met Mr Kim three times during his first term, but his October remark that he was “100%” open to another meeting drew no response.

Mr Kim has also drawn fresh confidence from the war in Ukraine, winning critical backing from Moscow after dispatching thousands of troops to fight alongside Russian forces.

The leaders last met in September, when the North Korean leader and Vladimir Putin were guests of honour to a military parade in China

Writing in an article carried on the front page of North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun, Mr Xi promised deeper cooperation.

“No matter how the times change or how the international situation evolves, the traditional friendship between China and North Korea is always invincible,” Mr Xi wrote.

Mr Xi most recently met Mr Kim in September, when he welcomed the North Korean leader and Mr Putin as guests of honour at a military parade in Beijing commemorating the 80th anniversary of victory over imperial Japan in World War II.

Taiwan counterweight

A growing line of world leaders has sought meetings with Mr Xi as an increasingly unpredictable United States under Mr Trump has prompted many governments to strengthen ties with Beijing.

At the same time, conflicts in the Middle East have absorbed more of Washington’s focus, while Mr Trump has made scant progress with North Korea — particularly on the nuclear issue — despite the fanfare that surrounded his earlier summits with Kim.

North Korea also remains the only country bound to China by an official military alliance.

Beijing regards self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory, and analysts say North Korea could prove a useful counterweight to US allies in the region, including South Korea and Japan.

Relations between China and Japan, long marked by strain, have worsened since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a security hawk, suggested last year that Tokyo might intervene militarily if China attempted to seize Taiwan.