Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands after watching a performance at the Pyongyang Gymnasium on Monday. [Yonhap]
Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands after watching a performance at the Pyongyang Gymnasium on Monday. [Yonhap]

Xi Jinping's summit talks with Kim Jong-un, in which the Chinese leader directly raised military cooperation and stressed the restoration of bilateral ties, will indirectly encourage North Korea's military buildup, analysts say.

The South China Morning Post cited Kang Jun-young, a professor of Chinese studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, as saying Monday that while a qualitative leap in North Korea's naval capabilities would be difficult to guarantee, a recovery in Sino-North Korean trade could improve access to components, materials and financing — raising the sustainability of North Korea's naval modernization.

According to China's General Administration of Customs, bilateral trade reached $325.8 million in April, the highest level since November 2017, when it stood at $388 million. Trade plunged when North Korea sealed its borders during the COVID-19 pandemic but has recovered rapidly since last year.

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, told the outlet that China is seeking to use North Korea as a tool to counter the military buildup of the United States and Japan. "For China, responding effectively and appropriately to the militarization of the US and Japan is of paramount importance," Lim said. "In that regard, they appear to have concluded that it would be more advantageous to strategically leverage North Korea's military capabilities."

At summit talks with Kim on Monday, Xi said China's firm position of attaching great importance to traditional Sino-North Korean friendship — and its unwavering support for Kim's leadership of North Korea's socialist cause — would not change regardless of how the international situation evolved. Xi also directly mentioned "military" cooperation among the areas in which the two countries should work together.

Notably absent from the publicly released summit outcomes was any mention of North Korea's denuclearization or a resolution to the Korean Peninsula issue. Some foreign media outlets, including Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun, assessed that China has in effect shifted its position toward tacitly accepting North Korea's nuclear status.

The outlet also noted that Xi's visit came as North Korea is accelerating development across its nuclear, advanced conventional and traditional military capabilities. "North Korea is expanding its submarine fleet, considered one of the largest in the world by number, and is pressing ahead with construction of its first nuclear-powered submarine — a project Kim announced had moved beyond the design and research phase in 2021," it said. The Choe Hyon-class destroyer, it added, is the first North Korean warship equipped with a phased-array radar and a vertical launch system, and may have received technical support from Russia.

North Korea's deepening cooperation with Russia in military and energy sectors was also flagged as a threat to Northeast Asian security. "North Korea has gained combat experience in drone warfare through its involvement in the war in Ukraine, building up its own military drone capabilities in the process," the outlet said, adding that Pyongyang has unveiled new weapons modeled on foreign designs, including loitering munitions similar to those used by Russia and Israel.


kate01@heraldcorp.com