Xi visits Pyongyang for first time in 7 years

First overseas trip of the year; one-night, two-day schedule

Kim Jong-un elevated after Trump, Putin summits — analysts

North Korea-China-Russia solidarity, economic cooperation, Tumen River access in focus

North Korea vows nuclear status 'absolutely non-negotiable'; China stresses friendship

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in North Korea on Monday for a one-night, two-day visit — his first trip to Pyongyang in seven years. Xi is pictured with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a Victory Day ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sept. 3 last year. [Reuters]
Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in North Korea on Monday for a one-night, two-day visit — his first trip to Pyongyang in seven years. Xi is pictured with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a Victory Day ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sept. 3 last year. [Reuters]

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in North Korea on Monday for a one-night, two-day visit — his first trip to Pyongyang in seven years — as the international community focused its attention on what the two leaders would put on the summit table.

Analysts broadly expect denuclearization to be pushed to the margins of the agenda, with China's primary goal being to reassert its influence over North Korea amid deepening ties between Pyongyang and Moscow. North Korea has pushed back against any suggestion that Washington and Beijing share denuclearization objectives, signaling it intends to keep the issue off the table.

Xi's visit is his first to Pyongyang since 2019, and the two leaders' first face-to-face meeting since Kim Jong-un traveled to Beijing in September last year for China's 80th anniversary Victory Day celebrations — a gap of nine months. The summit is expected to reinvigorate what analysts describe as a somewhat loosened bilateral relationship, while also advancing economic cooperation and strengthening North Korea-China-Russia solidarity.

Foreign media have broadly assessed that Xi's Monday-through-Tuesday visit elevates North Korea's standing, both in its timing and its format. Japan's Asahi Shimbun noted that Xi is meeting Kim less than a month after hosting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin separately in Beijing, and that Xi chose North Korea as his first overseas destination of the year — a signal, the paper said, of how seriously Beijing regards Pyongyang.

Ahead of his arrival, Xi published a signed article in the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, declaring that "no matter how the times change or how the international situation shifts, the traditional China-North Korea friendship will forever remain undefeatable."

Most analysts read Xi's show of regard for North Korea as an effort to check the increasingly close relationship between Pyongyang and Moscow. Asahi noted that while China remains North Korea's largest trading partner — accounting for roughly 90 percent of its external trade — that relationship has not fully recovered to pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. Russia, by contrast, has received North Korean troops for its war in Ukraine and has supplied Pyongyang with energy and food, forging an unprecedentedly tight bond. Reuters described Xi's visit as "a diplomatic move to pull North Korea back into China's orbit," adding that Beijing also aims to "recalibrate its relationship with Pyongyang while checking Russia's rapidly growing influence over the North."

To that end, China is expected to offer enhanced economic support as an inducement, while also leveraging its recently improved ties with Washington. Asahi suggested that Kim, with an eye on the North Korea-US talks that Trump has expressed enthusiasm for, will use the meeting with Xi — who held talks with Trump last month — to gauge both Washington's intentions and Beijing's own calculations. Observers also note that China, anticipating the possibility of a North Korea-US summit, is likely to position itself as North Korea's economic backer through expanded trade, using that role to project influence.

Among the economic cooperation topics expected to feature in the talks is the question of North Korea's access to the Pacific through the Tumen River. Discussions on the Greater Tumen Initiative — a multilateral framework through which North Korea, China and Russia seek to deepen economic cooperation — are also drawing attention. If the GTI framework takes concrete shape, South Korea's participation could also come up. North Korea is also seeking talks on developing the Rason Special Economic Zone.

Because China's overriding priority is using an upgraded North Korea relationship to counterbalance both Russia and the United States, denuclearization is widely expected to be a low priority at this summit. During Xi's 2019 visit to Pyongyang, he told Kim that China remained "committed" to the goal of halting the North's nuclear program, and both China and Russia had at that point supported tightening US-led sanctions on the North. But when Kim met Xi at China's Victory Day celebrations in September last year, the official joint statement contained no mention of denuclearization whatsoever.

China's most recent nuclear nonproliferation white paper also omitted an explicit reference to denuclearization as a goal on the Korean Peninsula.

At last month's China-US summit, the word "denuclearization" was absent from Xi's public remarks as well. Zhao Tong, a senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Bloomberg that for Xi, "it is now more important to prioritize improving relations with Pyongyang to preserve and expand China's influence over North Korea than to pressure it on the nuclear issue."

Against that backdrop, North Korea moved to project warmth ahead of Xi's arrival, emphasizing the development of bilateral ties.

The Rodong Sinmun published an editorial Monday headlined "Warmly Welcome the Envoy of Friendship of the Chinese People," declaring that "the streets of Pyongyang, which are welcoming Comrade Xi Jinping as the most honored state guest, are enveloped in an atmosphere of friendship," and that "our people warmly welcome Comrade Xi Jinping, who visits us again carrying the warm feelings of friendship of the fraternal Chinese people." The editorial also recalled that next month marks the 65th anniversary of the signing of the Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, saying it is "the aspiration of the peoples of both countries to develop the traditional friendship in a more vigorous manner across various fields in keeping with the demands of the new era."

In the days immediately before Xi's arrival, North Korea's top leadership also moved to display the country's nuclear resolve and military capabilities.

In a statement released Sunday, Kim Yo-jong, director of the Workers' Party's General Affairs Department, shrugged off a US announcement that Trump and Xi had agreed at their recent summit on the goal of complete denuclearization of North Korea, calling it "America's habitual game of spreading lies."

Kim said North Korea's status as a nuclear-armed state is "an absolutely non-negotiable red line and an undeniable reality, whether anyone recognizes it or not," adding that "nuclear weapons are the most powerful logic in any argument with those who worship force" and that Pyongyang "will never tolerate any threat or compromise regarding its sovereignty and security." While the statement was framed as a rebuttal of the US position, analysts read it as a preemptive move to foreclose any attempt by Xi to raise denuclearization during the visit.

Kim Jong-un also made a series of visits to military sites in the days leading up to Xi's arrival. Earlier this month he inspected a newly built uranium enrichment facility inside the Yongbyon nuclear complex, and on Saturday he visited a munitions enterprise where he ordered the production capacity for ballistic cruise missiles to be expanded to 2.5 times its current level within five years.


kate01@heraldcorp.com