Chinese leader Xi Jinping will visit North Korea on Monday and Tuesday, his first visit to this ally country since 2019, Chinese state media announced on Friday (June 5).
Beijing is a key diplomatic, economic and political supporter of North Korea, one of the most isolated countries in the world and subject to heavy international sanctions. According to the National Committee on North Korea, a Washington-based think tank, Pyongyang depended on China in 2022 for nearly 95% of its total trade and 85% of its exports.
“At the invitation of Kim Jong Un (…) Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and president of the People’s Republic of China, will pay a state visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on June 8 and 9,” announced the Chinese television channel CCTV.
During his last trip to the country in 2019, Xi Jinping celebrated the “indestructible friendship” between the two neighboring nations. It was the first such visit since that of his predecessor Hu Jintao in 2005.
The trip will also be the first official overseas visit this year for Xi Jinping, who hosted U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in May. Several experts argue that this diplomatic activity indicates Beijing’s desire to position itself as a stable alternative to Donald Trump’s United States.
Military programs
Kim Jong Un, for his part, went to Beijing in September, invited alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin for the ceremonies of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. While strengthening ties with China, Pyongyang has also strengthened its relationship with Moscow since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
North Korea helps Russia by sending troops and equipment, receiving in return military technological assistance in particular. This support made it possible to revive a North Korean economy that had long been in great difficulty, according to the South Korean Ministry of Reunification, which noted in April “a phase of gradual recovery”.
North Korea has also doubled down on its military programs, in particular increasing missile tests. Analysts believe that the country could seek to take advantage of the weakening of international standards, in a context of war in Ukraine and the Middle East, to consolidate its status as a nuclear power.
Kim Jong Un said this week that his country’s capacity to produce weapons-grade nuclear materials had “more than doubled” in the past five years, and announced an “exponential” increase in the country’s nuclear forces.
Pyongyang is subject to multiple United Nations sanctions prohibiting it from developing nuclear weapons and using ballistic missile technology, restrictions that have been repeatedly flouted. Beijing, which views with concern the increase in its neighbor’s nuclear capabilities, called on the two countries in April to “strengthen communication and coordination on major international and regional issues”.
Faced with the rise of North Korean military power, Xi Jinping considers “that it is urgent to manage these tensions before Mr. Kim’s actions cause an irreversible and automatic deployment of American, South Korean and Japanese military forces in the immediate periphery of China”, judges Seong-Hyon Lee, analyst at the George HW Bush Foundation for United States/China relations. But this summit also represents “the tacit recognition by Beijing of Mr. Kim’s nuclear status,” believes this researcher.
