Koh EweAnd
Laura Bicker,China Correspondent
Chinese President Xi Jinping completed a two-day visit to Pyongyang, his first official trip to North Korea since 2019.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pulled out all the stops to welcome Xi upon his arrival on Monday, from a red carpet welcome to elaborate acrobatic performances.
Although no concrete agreements emerged from the trip, its importance was recognized by Kim, who said Xi’s choice of Pyongyang for his first state visit of the year showed “the highest importance” placed on bilateral relations, according to a report by state media KCNA.
The trip also comes as Beijing attempts to reassert its influence over its strategically vital but deeply unpredictable partner, which has grown closer to Russia.
With this visit, President Xi will feel he has done enough to remind Kim that his main benefactor is China.
For Kim, having such a VIP on his doorstep, just weeks after Xi’s meetings with U.S. leader Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, will show he has important friends despite continued international sanctions.
At an evening banquet on Monday, Xi praised relations between the two countries, saying China and North Korea are “linked by mountains and rivers and share a common destiny”, the official Xinhua newspaper reported.
Kim echoed this, saying North Korea would continue to make its friendship with China a top priority and reaffirmed his support for Beijing’s “one China” principle.
The visit is a reminder of the strength of their friendship, even amid “upheavals in international affairs,” Kim reportedly said.
Xi added that he had reached an “important consensus” with Kim to “seize the trend of the times” and deepen both high-level exchanges and people-to-people ties.
The two leaders also noted that this year marks the 65th anniversary of the defense agreement between China and North Korea, the only one China has concluded with another country.
China is North Korea’s most important political and economic partner and a lifeline in the face of heavy international sanctions linked to its nuclear weapons program.
But despite North Korea’s dependence on China and its position as a junior partner in the alliance, this week Kim appeared to have his way on at least one key issue.
Discussions of North Korea’s denuclearization were conspicuously absent from official media reporting on Monday’s talks – although that is not a surprise.
In recent years, China has significantly toned down its calls for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and avoided discussing it publicly.
Xi was accompanied on his trip by some of his government’s most senior figures, including his de facto chief of staff Cai Qi, Defense Minister Dong Jun, Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Commerce Minister Wang Wentao.
On Tuesday, the two leaders visited the Friendship Tower, which commemorates Chinese soldiers who fought in the Korean War. They also visited Pyongyang’s highest cadre school, where they planted a fir tree symbolizing their evergreen friendship, Xinhua reported.
During his stay in Pyongyang, Xi was hosted at the Kumsusan State Guest House, an exclusive residence in the heart of Pyongyang.
Reportedly built in 2019 to welcome Xi for his first-ever state visit to Pyongyang that year, the guesthouse has hosted foreign leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
The lavish public displays, however, have not succeeded in masking all the differences between China and North Korea.
In his speech, Xi said he hoped the visit would “jointly open up a better future for the socialist cause of the two countries” – a sore point for China.
Beijing has long encouraged North Korea to follow the Chinese model of communist leadership: maintaining one-party rule while expanding markets, foreign investment and international trade.
And “elements in the Chinese reports suggest that President Xi may be frustrated,” Sydney Seiler, president of CSIS Korea, told social media platform X.
Kim does not mention any development process and “North Korea still refuses to learn from China’s development experience,” he said.