China's Xi to visit North Korea as Beijing seeks deeper Pyongyang ties

Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit North Korea from June 8 to 9, state news agency Xinhua said on Friday, his first trip in nearly seven years as Beijing looks to reassert ties with Pyongyang.

The announcement follows separate summits Xi hosted in Beijing for US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin last month. Trump, who met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times in his first term, previously said he would be open to meeting the North Korean leader again.

Xi would be visiting on an invitation from Kim, North Korean state media KCNA said. Kim was a guest at a massive military parade in Beijing last September, travelling to the Chinese capital on his signature green armoured train.

Beijing has worked to draw Pyongyang — its only formal treaty ally — back into its fold, after the Covid-19 pandemic froze exchanges and the North Korean leader deepened relations with Moscow by sending troops and weapons to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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

“One of the audiences is Russia,” he said.

Passenger train services between Beijing and Pyongyang resumed in March, after a six-year suspension that began with the pandemic, with Air China later restarting flights between the capitals. Bookings, however, have been limited to some business travellers and exchange students, with Chinese tourists still excluded.

First overseas trip this year

Pyongyang will be Xi’s first overseas visit this year. The 72-year-old, whose trips abroad are becoming less and less frequent, last travelled internationally in late October when he went to South Korea, where he also met Trump.

“At the symbolic level, it is important for Xi to keep tabs on what’s going on in Pyongyang,” said Delury, who said Xi visiting both Koreas within a year would be a “big win” for the peninsula.

“There’s a kind of symmetry that the Chinese like to keep up” regarding the two Koreas, he said.

Since becoming China’s top leader in 2012, Xi has so far visited North Korea once and South Korea twice. He also travelled to Pyongyang in 2008 when he was vice president and Kim’s father — Kim Jong Il — was the North’s leader.

This week, KCNA reported on Kim’s visit to a newly operational nuclear material production factory at which he called for an “exponential” expansion of Pyongyang’s atomic arsenal.

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