NORTH KOREA’S Kim Jong-il and China’s communist leadership vowed that their alliance, “sealed in blood”, would span the generations, as the secretive leader completed his week-long visit to China.
“Kim Jong-il stated that the friendship between China and North Korea and their peoples is a truly precious thing,” China’s official Xinhua news agency reported
“We must relay this friendship on from one generation to the next. That is our great historic task.”
Mr Kim took his customised armoured train for a whistle-stop tour of China on a look-and-learn visit to the cities of Yangzhou and Nanjing, eager to examine China’s economic miracle and study its efforts to introduce renewable energy at close quarters.
China’s communist leadership is fond of saying that the two allies are “as close as lips and teeth” and that their friendship is “unbreakable”.
North Korea’s KCNA news agency said China’s premier Wen Jiabao praised the two countries’ friendship “sealed in blood”. China fought on the side of the North in the 1950-1953 Korean War.
Although Mr Kim’s meetings with China’s president Hu Jintao and Mr Wen did not formally mention his plans to appoint his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor, official reports showed that succession was certainly the subtext. China’s leadership is due to change next year. Mr Kim had a stroke two years ago and is expected to step down at some point.
“You, General Secretary Kim Jong-il, attach great importance to developing Sino-North Korean relations, and since last year have visited China three times, stressing many times that the young generation must properly inherit the friendship between China and North Korea,” Mr Hu told Mr Kim, according to Xinhua.
North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and its provocative actions against its neighbours have provoked the anger of the international community in recent years, but Beijing has stood by its ideological allies in Pyongyang.
Beijing fears regime collapse in North Korea could see refugees streaming over its borders and also lead to the United States-backed South Korea gaining influence on China’s borders.
This week’s trip was Mr Kim’s third to Asia’s biggest economy in just over a year.
The Chinese government is busy entertaining some of the world’s other pariahs this week.
Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, visited Beijing to commemorate four decades of diplomatic ties.
Also paying his respects was Burma’s president, Thein Sein, a former general and prime minister in the military junta that handed power to a nominally civilian government at the end of March.