Chinese President Xi Jinping will arrive in North Korea on Monday after holding back-to-back summits with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month.
China, Washington’s main geopolitical rival, has been North Korea’s main trading partner for decades and the main source of diplomatic and economic support for the country of about 26 million people.
Xi’s visit comes as nuclear talks between North Korea and Washington remain deadlocked. The White House said last month that Xi and Trump “affirmed their shared goal of denuclearizing North Korea” during their summit in Beijing.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman 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.”
However, leader Kim Jong Un’s forceful sister said just a day before Xi arrived that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program was a “line of no retreat”.
Gu Minshan, a professor of diplomacy at DePaul University, told AFP that China “always puts stability first and currently must deal with its relations and differences with the United States”.
“Beijing may have accepted North Korea as a nuclear power,” but Xi Jinping “may tell Kim Jong Un that what China needs most is stability.”
Li Chengxian, a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Asia Center, also said that Beijing is turning to “guaranteeing the durability of the regime” rather than seeking to force North Korea to denuclearize.
“China’s broader regional strategy benefits from a stable, heavily armed and unified buffer state that absorbs the military bandwidth of the United States and its allies,” he told AFP.
– Status improvement –
North Korea has repeatedly declared that it is an “irreversible” nuclear power since the 2019 summit between Kim Jong Un and Trump collapsed over denuclearization and the scope of sanctions relief.
Trump met with Kim three times during his first term, but said in October he was “100 percent” open to meeting again, but received no response.
Kim Jong-un has also been emboldened by the war in Ukraine, gaining critical support from Moscow after sending thousands of troops to fight alongside Russian troops.
Some analysts said the summit could be Xi Jinping’s way of countering Russia’s growing influence on North Korea, but DePaul’s library stressed that “generally speaking, Moscow is not a great power like China.”
“Moscow’s power relationship with Pyongyang is more equal than Beijing’s with Pyongyang; Moscow needs Kim Jong Un to participate in the Ukraine war just as Kim Jong Un needs Russian technology sharing and food,” she said.
Xi Jinping last met with Kim Jong Un in September, when he invited the North Korean leader and Putin as guests of honor to attend a military parade in Beijing commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory over Japanese imperialism in World War II.
Analysts said Kim’s appearance at the spectacular military parade alongside Xi Jinping and Putin was a sign of Kim’s elevated status, a dramatic display of his rising stature on the global stage.
– Taiwan counterweight –
Xi Jinping has hosted a number of world leaders, and the United States under Trump has become increasingly unpredictable, forcing many to strengthen their alliances with Beijing.
Conflicts in the Middle East have also attracted more of Washington’s attention, and despite Trump’s earlier high-profile summit with Kim, he has made little progress on North Korea, particularly on the nuclear front.
North Korea is also the only country to have a formal, binding military alliance with China.
“The offensive war currently being waged by the United States could harm China’s key interests, such as energy supplies,” Vladimir Tikhonov, a professor of Korean studies at the University of Oslo, told AFP.
That’s partly why “Xi Jinping appears to be trying to solidify his alliance with North Korea,” he said.
Analysts say Beijing claims self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory, and North Korea could also be an effective counterweight to U.S. partners in the region, including South Korea and Japan.
Long-frozen Sino-Japanese relations have soured since security hawkish Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested last year that Tokyo might intervene militarily against any Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan.
“As China’s international status rises, Beijing may seek to more actively draw Pyongyang into its diplomatic orbit,” said Lim Eul-cheol, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University.
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This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
