BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet Kim Jong Un next week in a trip to North Korea, in his first visit in nearly seven years, according to official media in both countries.
China is the largest trading partner and political ally of North Korea, which faces sweeping international sanctions as a result of its nuclear weapons program and alleged human rights violations.
The visit comes weeks after Xi received US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing.
It is expected that Kim will seek more trade over the land border and more Chinese tourists to fill its newly built beach and ski resorts.
China and North Korea share a 1,400km-long border and are bound by a defense pact — the only one China has signed with any country. This year marks the 65th anniversary of that treaty.
Xi will visit Pyongyang Monday to Tuesday, both nations said in brief dispatches. His last visit was in June 2019.
The announcement of the trip came a day after North Korea unveiled a new facility to produce the ingredients for nuclear bombs.
During a visit to the plant, Kim announced plans to bolster the country’s nuclear forces “at an exponential rate.”
Experts say the plant’s disclosure implies that Kim was eager to cement his country’s status as a nuclear weapons state ahead of Xi’s visit.
The experts say Kim wants international recognition as a nuclear state so that he can demand 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.
Kim has been focusing on expanding his nuclear arsenal since his high-stakes diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019.
Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to restore diplomacy with Kim, but the North Korean leader has said the US must first drop its demand for North Korea to denuclearize as a precondition for talks.
For Kim, the propaganda value of Xi’s visit is self-evident. North Korea had improved its standing on the world stage after withstanding the pandemic and entering the war in Ukraine on the side of Russia.
Despite Beijing’s close ties with both Pyongyang and Moscow, Xi is wary of the burgeoning alliance between Kim and Putin.
“As North Korea builds closer ties with Russia, China seeks to use Xi’s trip to reassert its influence over Pyongyang and safeguard its strategic interests in northeast Asia,” said William Yang, an analyst for the International Crisis Group.
At their meeting in Beijing last month, Putin and Xi expressed their opposition to “foreign policy isolation, economic sanctions, military pressure and other methods of creating threats to the security” of North Korea, according to a statement from the Kremlin.
Embracing the ideas of a “new Cold War” and a multipolar world, Kim has pushed for a more assertive foreign policy by expanding ties with countries locked in confrontations with the United States.
Xi, who traveled widely in his first years in power, has curtailed his international trips sharply since the COVID-19 pandemic. His last overseas trip was to South Korea last fall for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where he talked with Trump.
Source: Saudi Gazette