By Kang Jin-kyu and Claire Lee
President Xi Jinping wrapped up a visit to North Korea on Tuesday, following meetings with Kim Jong Un that the Chinese leader said reached an “important consensus” on building ties.
AFP looks at what we know about the rare summit.
What happened?
Xi arrived in the capital of North Korea, Pyongyang on Monday for his first official visit to the diplomatically isolated country since 2019.
He traveled with his wife and several other senior officials for a two-day trip, which he said was aimed at bringing ties between the old partners to “new heights”.
The timing proved important, as Xi hosted a number of world leaders, including US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, in Beijing.
State media images showed Xi and Kim beaming as they shook hands, with the Chinese leader receiving a lavish welcome ceremony with a red carpet military salute and cheering crowds.
What were the results?
Xi said he had reached “an important consensus with Kim on the development of China-DPRK relations in the new era,” China’s Xinhua news agency reported, using North Korea’s official acronym.
The leaders agreed to put the two nations’ friendly relations “on a more solid foundation,” North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said.
Xi told Kim that their countries should “strengthen exchanges in diplomacy, law enforcement (and) the military” and expand economic cooperation, according to Chinese state media.
He also called for the expansion of economic cooperation, citing the recent reopening of border crossings and transport links.
Beijing has long been Pyongyang’s biggest economic partner, with US and South Korean estimates showing that China has accounted for nearly all of North Korea’s annual foreign trade in recent years.
In March, flights and passenger train services between Beijing and Pyongyang resumed after a six-year hiatus due to pandemic-era border closures and their aftermath.
What about North Korea’s nuclear weapons?
Official readings and state media reports have not said whether Xi and Kim discussed North Korea’s nuclear weapons development, for which Pyongyang languishes under international sanctions.
That’s important because the White House said last month that the Chinese leader and Trump had “confirmed their shared goal of denuclearizing North Korea” during their summit in Beijing.
Kim has repeatedly vowed never to give up his nuclear arsenal, and his powerful sister said before Xi’s visit that the program was Pyongyang’s “line of no retreat”.
The absence of denuclearization from official statements means the summit effectively “appears to have been a forum where China gave Pyongyang the rights to nuclear weapons,” Lee Ho-ryung of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyzes told AFP.
In return, Kim appeared to “endorse Beijing’s one-China principle in relation to Taiwan,” she added, referring to the self-governing island that China claims as its own.
“Our party and government will fully support the policy and stance of the Chinese party and government to protect core interests over the one-China principle,” KCNA said.
How did Kim come out of the talks?
Analysts noted that the summit took place as Kim enjoys enhanced global status after supporting Russia with troops and munitions in its war with Ukraine.
Kim is “no longer just a recipient of aid, but a provider of critical military assets,” having “successfully exploited his nuisance value in strategic importance,” Seong-Hyon Lee, a visiting scholar at Harvard University’s Asia Center, told AFP.
Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said the meeting reflected the convergence of “North Korea’s desire to cement its status as an indispensable strategic actor through its nuclear arsenal” and China’s “expanding ambitions to shape the Northeast Asian order.”
In addition to Xi and Putin, Kim’s meetings with leaders from Belarus, Laos and Vietnam since last year have proven that North Korea is no longer such a diplomatic country, said Minseon Ku, a diplomacy professor at DePaul University.
China and North Korea have a military alliance centered on a 1961 treaty that obligates each side to come to the other’s aid in the event of an armed attack.
North Korea is the only country with which China has such a military agreement, although Pyongyang also signed a mutual defense treaty with Russia in 2024.
Beijing appears to be aiming to “provide economic incentives while monitoring North Korea to ensure that it does not act against Beijing’s interests in the diplomatic and military spheres,” Hong said.
