Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao each stayed three days

China and North Korea announced Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping will make a state visit to Pyongyang from Monday to Tuesday. The trip marks Xi's first visit to North Korea in about seven years since June 2019, and his second since Kim Jong-un took power. Pictured is Kim Jong-un shaking hands with Xi Jinping ahead of bilateral talks during Kim's visit to China on Sept. 4, 2025. [Yonhap]
China and North Korea announced Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping will make a state visit to Pyongyang from Monday to Tuesday. The trip marks Xi's first visit to North Korea in about seven years since June 2019, and his second since Kim Jong-un took power. Pictured is Kim Jong-un shaking hands with Xi Jinping ahead of bilateral talks during Kim's visit to China on Sept. 4, 2025. [Yonhap]

Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to North Korea is expected to follow the same one-night, two-day format as his first trip there in 2019, running Monday through Tuesday.

Past Chinese leaders' visits to Pyongyang typically stretched over three days and centered on friendship diplomacy. Analysts say the compressed schedule this time reflects a deliberate intent to focus on substantive summit talks and key agenda items.

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, visits by Chinese leaders to North Korea have been relatively infrequent. High-level delegations continued to travel to Pyongyang after President Liu Shaoqi's visit in September 1963, though the character of those trips varied by era.

In the 1970s, Premier Zhou Enlai, Party Chairman Hua Guofeng and Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping each visited North Korea in succession, tending to the two countries' alliance. The 1980s saw active exchanges at the highest levels of party and government, with visits by General Secretary Hu Yaobang, Premier Zhao Ziyang, President Li Xiannian and President Yang Shangkun.

Around the time China and South Korea established diplomatic relations in 1992, however, high-level North Korea-China summitry dropped off sharply. After President Yang Shangkun's visit that year, no Chinese head of state traveled to Pyongyang for roughly nine years.

Broadening the scope to top Chinese leaders, there was an 11-year gap between General Secretary Jiang Zemin's visit to Pyongyang in 1990 and his return in 2001 — by which point he held the combined titles of general secretary, president and chairman of the Central Military Commission.

In the ninth year of his rule, Jiang made an official friendship visit to Pyongyang from Sept. 3 to 5, 2001 — a two-night, three-day trip at the invitation of Chairman Kim Jong-il. Hu Jintao followed in the third year of his tenure, visiting Pyongyang from Oct. 28 to 30, 2005, also for two nights and three days.

Both Jiang and Hu held one-on-one and expanded talks with Kim Jong-il on the first day of their visits, then toured the Kumsusan Palace and attended a welcoming banquet. Their second days included high-level talks and an arts performance, after which they stayed one more night before departing on the third day — a nearly identical itinerary.

Xi himself visited North Korea in June 2008 as vice president — his first overseas trip just three months after taking that post.

During that June 17–19, 2008 visit, he held talks with Supreme People's Assembly Presidium Chairman Kim Yong-nam, paid his respects at the Friendship Tower, met with Chairman Kim Jong-il and toured the International Friendship Exhibition House — a two-night, three-day schedule.

His first visit to Pyongyang as president came in the seventh year of his rule, from June 20 to 21, 2019 — the first trip by a top Chinese leader since Hu Jintao's visit 14 years earlier.

On the first day of that trip, Xi attended a welcome ceremony, held expanded talks and joined a banquet hosted by Kim Jong-un. The following day, he visited the Friendship Tower, had lunch with Kim and then returned to China.

A senior official at an embassy in Beijing said Xi's shorter schedule compared with those of past Chinese leaders signals an intent to focus on the agenda through working-level summit diplomacy. The official added that the visit should be understood as part of a consecutive diplomatic flow following summit talks with US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month.


mokiya@heraldcorp.com