Xi says willing to bring China-North Korea ties to ‘new heights’ during rare visit

SEOUL – China’s President Xi Jinping made a rare visit to North Korea on June 8, where he met an emboldened Kim Jong Un who has drawn closer to Moscow while expanding his country’s nuclear weapons programme.

Xi’s trip to Pyongyang was his first since 2019, and came after he hosted a series of world leaders including US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Beijing.

Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan were warmly greeted at the airport by Kim in a lavish welcome ceremony complete with a red-carpet military salute and cheering crowds, according to Chinese state media.

Some streets in the capital also displayed North Korean and Chinese flags side by side.

China, Washington’s chief geopolitical rival, has been North Korea’s main trading partner by far for decades and a key source of diplomatic and economic support for the country hit by multiple international sanctions.

But Kim has boosted an alliance with Putin in recent years, securing critical support from Moscow after sending troops to fight alongside Russian forces.

Xi told Kim during talks on June 8 that he was willing to work together to bring their countries’ relations to “new heights”, state news agency Xinhua reported.

The two sides should strengthen exchanges “in diplomacy, law enforcement and the military”, Xi said.

“No matter how the international situation changes... the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK will not change,” he said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

‘Irreversible’

While the two countries are quick to talk up their friendship, North Korea’s commitment to its nuclear programme has been a thorn in the relationship.

Beijing has said it wants to see a denuclearised Korean peninsula, but North Korea has repeatedly declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state, particularly after Kim and Trump’s 2019 summit collapsed over Pyongyang’s weapons programme and sanctions relief.

China-North Korea exchanges faced a further blow soon after, when Pyongyang shuttered its borders during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Xi’s trip came just weeks after he held talks with Trump, during which the White House said the leaders “confirmed their shared goal to denuclearise North Korea”.

However, leader Kim’s powerful sister Kim Yo Jong said on the eve of Xi’s arrival that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme was “the line of no retreat”.

Minseon Ku, a diplomacy professor at DePaul University, told AFP that “Beijing probably has accepted North Korea as a nuclear state” but Xi “will probably tell Kim (Jong Un) that China wants stability more than anything”.

Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at the Harvard University Asia Center, also said Beijing is shifting towards “underwriting regime durability”, rather than seeking to coerce North Korea into denuclearisation.

“China’s broader regional strategy benefits from a stable, heavily armed and aligned buffer state that absorbs US and allied military bandwidth,” he said.

Xi last met Kim in September 2025, when he invited the North Korean leader and Putin to a military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

North Korea is the only country with an official, binding military alliance with China.

Military alliance

North Korea could also serve as a useful counterweight to US partners in the region, including South Korea and Japan, analysts said.

Long frosty China-Japan ties have deteriorated since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a security hawk, suggested in 2025 that Tokyo might intervene militarily in any Chinese attempt to take Taiwan.

“As China’s international standing rises, Beijing is likely seeking to draw Pyongyang more actively into its diplomatic orbit,” said Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at Kyungnam University.

Some analysts say the summit could be Xi’s way of countering Russia’s growing influence over North Korea, but DePaul’s Ku stressed that “overall, Moscow is not a major power like China”.

“Moscow-Pyongyang power relations are more equal than Beijing-Pyongyang; Moscow needs Kim for its war in Ukraine as much as Kim needs technology sharing and food from Russia,” she said.

Residents living close to the North Korean border expressed hope for greater openness from Pyongyang.

Jun Sang-gab, 65, a South Korean tour guide, said he hopes that “North Korea opens its economy” and follows China’s development model. “If they (the North) establish themselves economically, there won’t be any incidents like armed unification or war” on the Korean peninsula, he said. AFP