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Alyssa Chen

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea this week helped to improve Kim Jong-un’s international standing and gave him a “big strategic win”, analysts said.
Pyongyang has become increasingly close to Russia in recent years and has sent thousands of troops to support its war against Ukraine, but Xi’s visit reinforced the long-standing economic and cultural ties between China and North Korea.
It was the Chinese leader’s first foreign trip of the year and came less than a month after he hosted back-to-back meetings with his US and Russian counterparts Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Relations between China and North Korea cooled after the border was sealed during the Covid-19 pandemic and Pyongyang strengthened its military relationship with Russia.
But Patricia Kim, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said Pyongyang was now benefiting from Beijing and Moscow’s “implicit rivalry” for influence and was the “biggest winner”.


“The fact that neither Beijing nor Moscow is pressuring Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table or to commit to denuclearisation is a big strategic win for Kim Jong-un,” she said.
North Korea has an estimated 60 nuclear warheads, but has not been officially recognised as a nuclear power.
Russia has come much closer than China to acknowledging its nuclear status and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said two years ago that denuclearisation had “lost all meaning” and Moscow regarded it as a “closed issue”.
In contrast, Beijing has carefully avoided any language that might suggest recognition of Pyongyang’s nuclear status and did not mention the issue in its statements about Xi’s visit.
Kim, from the Brookings Institution, said that both Russia and China wanted to keep North Korea onside. She said the country was an important provider of manpower and munitions for Russia’s war against Ukraine, but China “wants to preserve leverage over its neighbour and prevent it from drifting too close to another major power”.
Jenny Town, director of the Korea programme at the Washington-based Stimson Centre, said: “I think for North Korea and for Kim Jong-un, this really highlighted his elevated global profile.
“So he is no longer a pariah in the international community, but really has proven himself and North Korea – as a partner to a major power in a war … enabling the country also to be better integrated into not only the relationship with Russia, but within Russia’s networks of friends and partners.”
Niklas Swanstrom, director of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm, said: “Pyongyang is consciously separating its external relationships by function. Russia is a military accelerator, China is an economic anchor.
“The Russia track has delivered battlefield experience, arms co‑development, energy supplies and diplomatic protection through Moscow’s obstruction of UN enforcement mechanisms. This cooperation has materially improved North Korea’s missile, satellite, and drone programmes, something China has been reluctant to enable at scale.”
North Korea has reportedly been given advanced military technology in return for its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine and, in a symbolically important gesture, its troops took part in last month’s Victory Day parade.


But China remains that country’s most important economic partner, accounting for over 90 per cent of its total legal trade.
Two-way trade between China and North Korea reached around 2.25 billion yuan in April, the highest level since December 2017, when comprehensive United Nations sanctions targeted many of North Korea’s key export sectors.
“[Kim] is deliberately arbitraging between Beijing and Moscow, using Russia to accelerate military capabilities while using China to stabilise the economy and international positioning. This reflects confidence, not desperation,” Swanstrom said.
“For Kim Jong-un, the optimal situation is to enjoy close ties with Beijing and Moscow, ensuring he does not become overly dependent on either while maximising the benefits of an alliance with both,” said John Delury, a senior fellow at the Asia Society in Seoul.
But Delury noted that a key question for Kim was whether he would press this advantageous situation to open up and grow the economy further, or pursue a more cautious approach in its dealings with China.
While North Korea historically played China and the Soviet Union against each other, that strategy succeeded because Beijing and Moscow were rivals, according to Cho Sung-min, an associate professor at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul.
“But China and Russia today are cooperating at the strategic level,” he said. “Therefore, I think Beijing’s jealousy over Russia-North Korea’s closer relationship has been exaggerated in the policy community.”
Some observers have questioned whether North Korea will see any long-term benefits from its military support for Russia.
“Pyongyang knows the conflict will not last forever. It is a black swan event from which North Korea has profited handsomely, but more through luck than strategy,” said Christopher Green, a senior consultant on the Korean peninsula at the International Crisis Group.
He said North Korea risked becoming “an unusually difficult and largely irrelevant place to do business” after the war ended.
“North Korea will still send labourers to the Russian far east and will probably retain a role in Russian military supply chains, especially while Moscow rebuilds its stockpiles. But beyond that, I think the relationship will slowly stagnate.”


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The Chinese president’s visit may have vindicated the North Korean leader’s strategy of playing off China and Russia, analysts say


The Chinese president’s visit may have vindicated the North Korean leader’s strategy of playing off China and Russia, analysts say.


Was Kim Jong-un the real winner from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The Chinese president’s visit may have vindicated the North Korean leader’s strategy of playing off China and Russia, analysts say

The Chinese president’s visit may have vindicated the North Korean leader’s strategy of playing off China and Russia, analysts say