San Francisco Frontiers - China's Xi in North Korea for rare visit

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.

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 a country hit by 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.

In an article published on the front page of North Korea's Rodong Sinmun, Xi underlined the special relationship between the two sides.

"No matter how the times change or how the international situation evolves, the traditional friendship between China and North Korea is always invincible," Xi wrote.

Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan were met at the airport by Kim in a red-carpet welcome complete with military salute and cheering crowds.

Huge portraits of the two leaders loomed over Kim Il Sung Square during a grand welcome ceremony, where Xi and Kim inspected the honour guard as a military band played their national anthems, state broadcaster CCTV showed.

- '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".

But leader Kim Jong Un's powerful sister said on the eve of the visit 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 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 told AFP.

Xi last met Kim in September, 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.

- Military alliance -

Trump has made little progress on North Korea, especially on the nuclear front, despite his earlier high-profile summits with Kim.

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

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 last year that Tokyo might intervene militarily in any Chinese attempt to take self-ruled 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 noted that "overall, Moscow is not a major power like China".

"Moscow-Pyongyang power relations are more equal than Beijing-Pyongyang; Moscow needs Kim for their 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.

South Korean tour guide Jun Sang-gab, 65, 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 told AFP.

I.Rodriguez--SFF