Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit North Korea to strengthen ties

By Liz Lee, Xiuhao Chen And Jack KimReuters

Xi will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and exchange views on bilateral relations and issues of common concern, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.
Photo: AFP/RNZ Composite

• Visit aims to reaffirm ties and counter Russian influence
• Xi’s first overseas visit this year demonstrates importance of ties
• Ahead of his visit, Kim called on the North to expand its nuclear arsenal

China announced that President Xi Jinping will visit North Korea for a two-day trip starting June 8 local time, his first in nearly seven years as Beijing seeks to reaffirm ties with Pyongyang, its only formal treaty ally.

Xi will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and exchange views on bilateral relations and issues of common concern, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.

“Both sides will use this visit as an opportunity to promote greater development of relations between China and North Korea in accordance with the times,” spokesman Mao Ning said at a press briefing.

Beijing has worked to bring Pyongyang back into its fold after the covid-19 pandemic froze trade and Kim deepened ties with Moscow by sending troops and weapons to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The two countries signed a treaty of cooperation and mutual assistance 65 years ago, which legally obliges them to provide each other with military support in the event of an attack.

“The implicit message from the Chinese side is that … we are still the main player when it comes to North Korea,” said John Delury, a senior fellow at the Asia Society.

“One of the target audiences is Russia.”

The announcement from the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s international department follows Xi’s summits in Beijing last month with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kim was a guest at a major military parade in Beijing last September, traveling to the Chinese capital aboard his iconic green armored train.

Passenger train services between the capitals resumed in March, after a six-year suspension caused by the pandemic, while Air China later resumed flights between them.

Reservations, however, were limited to certain business travelers and exchange students, with Chinese tourists still excluded.

First trip abroad this year

Xi’s visit to Pyongyang will be his first overseas this year. The 72-year-old, who travels abroad less, made his last international trip in late October to South Korea, where he also met with Trump.

Trump met with Kim three times during his first term and has previously said he would be willing to meet with the North Korean leader again.

“On a symbolic level, it is important for Xi to keep an eye on what is happening in Pyongyang,” said Delury, who said Xi’s visit to the two Koreas within a year would be a “big victory” for the peninsula.

“There is a kind of symmetry that the Chinese like to maintain” between the two Koreas, he added. South Korea views the trip only as a high-level bilateral exchange, with no ties to Moscow, a presidential Blue House official said.

“We do not interpret this as a coordinated move by the three countries, nor do we know how this would relate to the US-China summit,” the official said.

Seoul hopes Beijing will continue to play a constructive role on issues related to the peninsula, the Blue House said.

Since Xi became China’s top leader in 2012, he has visited North Korea once and his southern neighbor twice. He also visited Pyongyang in 2008 as vice president, where he met with then-leader Kim Jong Il, the current leader’s father. Kim called for an “exponential” expansion of Pyongyang’s atomic arsenal this week during his visit to a new nuclear material manufacturing facility, KCNA said.

Experts linked Kim’s on-site visit to the upcoming meeting with Xi. Before his visit to Beijing in September, Kim inspected plans for a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the “Hwasong-20.”

– Reuters