China’s president Xi Jinping will visit North Korea next week in his first trip in nearly seven years, both sides said on 5th June.
His visit will be the latest in the series of moves by China to solidify its ties with its nuclear-powered neighbour, Kim Jong Un, who has approached Russia in recent years, including sending troops and conventional arms to aid its war against Ukraine.
In the past year, Kim also has been warming up to North Korea’s largest trade partner and grant giver, China.
As North Korea deepens its cooperation with Russia, China is trying to leverage Xi’s visit to reinvigorate its influence over Pyongyang and protect its strategic interests in northeast Asia, said William Yang, analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Xi is set to make a state visit to the country from Monday to Tuesday, according to short reports from state media in both countries. His last visit was in June 2019.
The visit follows two back-to-back visits by Xi to Washington, D.C., where he met with President Trump and then Moscow, where he met with President Putin, in the past few weeks.
North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has been a matter of concern for the United States, which is opposed to it. Economic sanctions are being placed on North Korea for its nuclear and missile development by the UN.
The trip announcement followed North Korea’s unveiling of a new plant for making the components of nuclear weapons a day earlier. South Korea’s military has concluded that the nuclear site is a uranium enrichment plant.
Kim, during a visit to the plant, announced plans to increase the country’s nuclear forces “at an exponential rate.” The plant’s disclosure suggests that Kim was keen to secure his nation’s recognition as a nuclear weapons state before Xi’s visit, experts said.
The experts say Kim wants international recognition as a nuclear state to justify that he wants the lifting of the sanctions. They say Kim would ultimately push for arms reductions talks with the US to win concessions in return for a partial surrender of his nuclear capability.
Since that time, Kim has been preoccupied with increasing his nuclear stockpile after his high-stakes diplomacy efforts with Trump were dashed in 2019.
Trump has repeatedly voiced his wish to bring the two sides together for talks, but North Korea has insisted that the US first lift the demand for Pyongyang to take the first step in denuclearising as a prerequisite for the talks.
In September, Xi met Kim in Beijing, where the two agreed to support each other and boost cooperation. Kim was in the capital of China, Beijing, to participate in a military parade, alongside other foreign leaders such as Putin.
Russia and China, both Security Council veto-holding nations, have been seen to have previously thwarted the U.S. and others’ attempts to tighten international sanctions against North Korea despite its banned weapons tests.
Putin and Xi voiced their resistance to “foreign policy isolation, economic sanctions, military pressure and other means of creating threats to the security” of North Korea during their meeting in Beijing last month, said the Kremlin.
Kim has adopted the concept of a “new Cold War” and multipolar world, which has led him to seek a more assertive foreign policy approach that involves increasing the ties with nations involved in conflict with the United States.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Xi’s international travels have been drastically reduced. He spoke to Trump last fall during his last visit to overseas countries, which was to South Korea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
