President Xi Jinping has, over the years, drastically cut back on his trips abroad. More like Chairman Mao, he prefers to wait world leaders in Beijing.
His foreign visits since average about 14 trips per year during 2013–19 dropped to one during the 2020 pandemic year, to zero for 2021, and partially recovered to five or six trips per year during 2022–2025.
That makes what happened earlier this week worth our attention. Xi Jinping’s first foreign visit in 2026 – a year in which he has already hosted around a dozen world leaders including Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin – was not to Moscow or Washington.
The trip was to a bygone treachery: the heavily sanctioned and diplomatically isolated hermit kingdom of Kim Jong Un. This choice is a story and a wake-up call, and it has a name: the defensive problem.
Kim’s daring gambit
For decades, the China-North Korea relationship developed on a single, brutal logic: Pyongyang needed Beijing more than Beijing needed Pyongyang. Until recently, China accounted for over 95% of North Korea’s foreign trade. China supplied food, fuel, electronics, machinery, vehicles and textiles. This dependence was Beijing’s ultimate lever – a chain elegantly disguised as fraternal socialism.
But Kim has spent the last four years systematically cutting that chain. The pilot began after Russia’s war with Ukraine created needs for ammunition, artillery shells and manpower. By the end of 2024, 11,000 North Korean soldiers were deployed to fight alongside the Russian forces. In return, Pyongyang reaped a windfall that China could never have imagined: it won between them 7.7 and 14.4 billion dollars from providing equipment and manpower to Russia. This was much more than its total foreign trade 3.2 billion dollars for the year 2025.
North Korea was rewarded by President Putin with a two-day visit to Pyongyang June 2024his first visit since July 2000 when he was hosted by Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un had met with Putin in April 2019 (Vladivostok) and September 2023 (Vostochny Cosmodrome). Then the two had met in Beijing during China’s Victory Day celebrations September 2025.
Russia since then SUPPLY North Korea with advanced drone technology, air defense equipment, space assistance, anti-aircraft missiles and electronic warfare systems. There is speculation that Pyongyang has acquired a nuke submarine reactor. But Kim wasn’t just looking for weapons; he aspired to independence.
Rocket Man in the stands
The culmination of this transformation reached September 3, 2025 at Beijing’s Victory Day parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender during World War II. Kim Jong Un stood on the podium alongside Xi and Putin. He was accompanied by his teenage daughter and potential successor Kim Ju Ae and they were met at the Beijing railway station by a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, Cai Qi, and foreign minister, Wang Yi.
This was the first time that Xi, Putin and Kim appeared together in public; also the first case since Chairman Mao hosted Kim Jong Un’s grandfather Kim Il-sung and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at China’s National Day parade commemorating ten years of China’s liberation in 1959. Giving Kim Jong Un equal billing alongside President Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping had raised the diplomatic position of the leader of North Korea.
The man once mocked by Donald Trump as “Rocket Man“and threatened with “fire and fury“was granted the same ceremonial position as Russia’s leader. Among the 26 foreign leaders in the parade, only Putin and Kim were then invited by Xi to tea and a banquet in the Great Hall of the People. In this event covered by the global media, Kim had reaped the biggest “diplomatic surprises” of all.
President Trump has since publicly expressed a willingness to revive his personal diplomacy, telling South Korea’s prime minister in March 2026 how he has “maintained a good relationship with Chairman Kim Jong Un” saying “he is asking if Chairman Kim wants dialogue with the US and President Trump.”
Kim’s answer was self-assured: “If the US drops its hollow obsession with denuclearization and wants to pursue peaceful coexistence with North Korea based on the recognition of reality, there is no reason why we should not sit down.”
Beijing’s nightmare: the chain is gone
For Xi Jinping, this transformation of Kim Jong Un is no longer tactical. It presents a structural challenge. For the third time in China update Their Treaty of Amity, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance of 1961 to 2021. Its Article 1 obliges immediate military assistance “with all the means at his disposal“If either side is attacked. For seven decades, this made China the sole guarantor of North Korea. But with the 2024 Russia-North Korea Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, Kim has a second guarantor.
Diplomatic signals of Beijing’s concern have been very visible. In early October 2024, Xi Jinping had pointed out removed traditional reference to North Korea as a “friendly neighboring state” when responding to Kim’s congratulatory message on the PRC’s 75th anniversary. The experts described this as Beijing’s policy paralysis, saying that any option was a bad option as Beijing could not afford to lose its influence over Kim in Russia or destabilize this neighboring nuclear power or, worse, see Europe’s war imported into Asia.
But Kim continues to defy Beijing. In May 2024, with Premier Li Qiang in Seoul to attend the China-Japan-South Korea summit, North Korea launched a military satellite the appearance of deepening its military cooperation with Russia was a direct signal to China. The impact was evident in the reading from the Xi-Kim meeting in September 2025, which conspicuously did not mention “denuclearization”, which was in contrast to their last five summits.
This set the backdrop for Xi’s visit to Pyongyang, which also marked the 65th anniversary of the 1961 China-North Korea Treaty. Not only was Xi accompanied by senior leaders Cai Qi and Wang Yi, but the latter had even made a preparatory visit in Pyongyang two months ago. Xi even wrote an article for a North Korean newspaper describing bilateral relations as in a “new historical starting point.”
On the eve of Xi’s visit, China resumed direct passenger service TRAIN services and Air China the flights in Pyongyang six years after they closed the borders during the pandemic.
Xi optics vs Kim levers
The optics of Xi’s visit were therefore less about friendship and more about influence. According to the expertsthe chances of Xi reviving his red line on denuclearization or North Korea’s rapprochement with Putin were unlikely. Perhaps the visit was little more than Xi giving Kim a reading on his Trump summit and a signal that China, not Russia, remains Kim’s main ally. That Beijing feels compelled to make such an argument is itself the most telling measure of Kim’s increasing leverage.
Kim has transformed this relationship from addiction to bargaining. of North Korea growing nuclear arsenalestimated at around 150 warheads, projected to exceed 400 by 2040. Cumulative theft of cryptocurrency from North Korea The group of Lazarus hackers now exceed $6 billion attributed to incidents since 2017; an unlimited revenue stream, shielded from sanctions, that funds its missile program. Kim has battle-tested troops and mutual defense pacts with China and Russia and aspirations for BRICS membership.
Kim is no longer a recluse. He is a linchpin in a fractured world order with great powers lining up to prove him. That makes President Xi’s visit to Pyongyang this week all the more reflective of Chinese anxieties. And for Kim, these anxieties are the greatest asset he has ever possessed.
