Chinese language President Xi Jinping arrived in Pyongyang on Monday to the complete theatre of North Korean state ceremony, with flags, flowers, navy honours and crowds to welcome the chief of the nation that has lengthy been one in all North Korea’s closest allies.
Kim Jong Un and his spouse, Ri Sol Ju, greeted Xi and spouse, Peng Liyuan, at Pyongyang’s worldwide airport earlier than the Chinese language chief was taken to the capital’s major sq., the place portraits of Xi and Kim appeared out over the choreographed show of friendship.
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“Lengthy Stay the Unbreakable Friendship and Unity between North Korea and China,” one banner learn, in response to Chinese language information outlet Xinhua.
Xi’s first go to to North Korea since 2019 comes as each governments are in search of to reaffirm a relationship that has survived famine, nuclear tensions, diplomatic pressure and a shifting international order.
Their relationship has typically been described with an outdated Chinese language phrase: “As shut as lips and enamel” – a metaphor famously first used within the Nineteen Fifties by Chairman Mao Zedong to outline the shut ties of the historic allies .
Right here’s a potted historical past of their shut, and generally tumultuous, relationship.
A revolutionary bond
The roots of the connection pre-date the founding of each trendy states, as many early North Korean leaders, together with Kim Il Sung, had hyperlinks to the Chinese language Communist motion earlier than the Democratic Individuals’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was established in 1948. A yr later, on October 6, 1949, North Korea and the newly based Individuals’s Republic of China established formal diplomatic relations.
1950-1953 Korean Conflict
The alliance between them was quickly examined by struggle, when North Korean forces had been pushed again throughout the Korean Conflict between North Korea and South Korea.
China entered the battle, sending giant numbers of troops from the Individuals’s Volunteer Military throughout the Yalu River. The Chinese language intervention helped forestall the collapse of North Korea and contributed to the stalemate that left the Korean Peninsula divided.
The human value was immense, with China struggling casualties of between 180,000 to 400,000, whereas Korea was left devastated and partitioned. However from Beijing and Pyongyang’s perspective, the struggle cast a bond that also shapes the 2 nations’ collective reminiscence.
1961: Treaty of Friendship
In 1961, China and North Korea signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Help. Its most necessary clause commits both sides to help the opposite if it comes beneath armed assault. The treaty stays vital as a result of it’s China’s solely formal defence pact with one other nation.
Nineteen Sixties-Nineteen Seventies: Sino-Soviet break up and China’s Cultural Revolution
Regardless of that, Beijing has not handled it as a clean cheque for Pyongyang, and it has not all the time trusted Beijing to behave with out calculation. That stress has run by the connection for many years, notably throughout the Sino-Soviet break up, when North Korea tried to keep away from taking sides between Beijing and Moscow.
Relations with China worsened throughout the Cultural Revolution, however improved within the Nineteen Seventies. They cooled once more when China rejected North Korean hopes of renewed battle with the South, refusing help to invade South Korea.
Nineties: China opens its economic system and normalises relations with South Korea
One of many largest durations of turbulence within the relationship got here after China started opening its economic system and increasing ties with nations that North Korea considered with suspicion. Beijing’s determination to normalise relations with South Korea in 1992 was notably unsettling for Pyongyang.
As China launched market-oriented reforms whereas retaining state management over key components of its economic system, it opened as much as international commerce and international direct funding, and the neighbours started to comply with more and more totally different paths.
The collapse of the Soviet Union – Pyongyang’s principal backer – left North Korea more and more remoted and depending on China, creating new strains in a relationship as soon as rooted in shared revolutionary beliefs.
2006: China condemns North Korean nuclear checks
North Korea’s nuclear programme created one other supply of pressure, with China repeatedly stating that it opposed nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, and condemned North Korea’s nuclear weapons checks, together with the primary in 2006.
Beijing additionally didn’t oppose a number of rounds of United Nations sanctions towards Pyongyang, even because it remained North Korea’s most necessary financial lifeline.
Renewed heat and sturdy commerce
The present heat between Xi and Kim follows a number of years of renewed contact. Kim has visited China a number of occasions since 2018, whereas Xi travelled to Pyongyang in June 2019.
Whereas it has turn out to be more and more uncommon for Xi to journey in any respect – most international leaders have needed to journey to Beijing in recent times – he has taken the difficulty to fly to Pyongyang for this newest go to.
Commerce between the 2 nations is powerful. Within the first two months of 2026, bilateral commerce rose 22 p.c in contrast with the identical interval a yr earlier, underlining the continued significance of their financial relationship.
China additionally accounts for the overwhelming majority of North Korea’s official commerce. North Korea depends on China for gasoline, meals, equipment, autos, electronics and client items. Chinese language firms and ports additionally stay necessary gateways for North Korean exports. These embrace minerals, seafood, iron and metal items, watch parts and wigs and false hair merchandise. North Korea additionally continues to hunt earnings from abroad labour, regardless of UN sanctions aimed toward chopping off that income stream.
Nonetheless, analysts say China could also be involved about deepening relations between North Korea and Russia – one more reason Xi might have determined to personally journey to Pyongyang for this assembly.
As North Korea strengthens its navy and political ties with Russia, China has cause to remind each Pyongyang and the broader world that Beijing stays central to North Korea’s future.
That financial relationship provides Beijing appreciable affect, though Kim has repeatedly proven a willingness to pursue his personal safety technique, even when it complicates China’s diplomatic aims.
What does the longer term maintain?
A more in-depth relationship with Pyongyang might additionally strengthen Xi’s hand in any future discussions in regards to the Korean Peninsula. United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed curiosity in reviving diplomacy with Kim, whilst tensions over North Korea’s nuclear programme have resurfaced.
Final week, Kim unveiled a brand new facility for producing nuclear supplies and vowed to increase the nation’s nuclear forces “at an exponential charge”, signalling that denuclearisation stays as distant as ever.
Finally, Beijing needs to keep away from battle on its border, keep affect on the Korean Peninsula and make sure that North Korea doesn’t drift too far into Moscow’s orbit. Xi’s go to is a reminder that, regardless of shifting geopolitical currents, the connection between China and North Korea stays one of the vital consequential partnerships in East Asia.
