Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un will reaffirm the alliance between China and North Korea in Pyongyang today. But North Korea’s nuclear weapons are not up for negotiation.
When Xi meets Kim
When Xi Jinping arrives in Pyongyang today on his first trip outside China since the start of this year, he can expect a lavish welcome from his North Korean hosts, with a display of marching bands, military hardware and happy children. But Xi’s meeting with an increasingly confident Kim Jong-un also has an important political and strategic purpose with implications for the future of the Korean peninsula and the whole of east Asia.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is Beijing’s only formal military ally, an arrangement with its roots in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 when China and the Soviet Union fought alongside the North Koreans against a United Nations coalition led by the United States. But Kim has deepened his country’s military co-operation with Russia in recent years, sharing munitions and military technology and sending North Korean soldiers to fight alongside Vladimir Putin’s forces on the border with Ukraine.
China remains North Korea’s most important economic partner and bilateral trade surged this year to its highest level since 2017 when international sanctions began to tighten around Pyongyang. But a day before Xi’s visit, Kim’s sister Kim Yo-jong made clear that the reason for those sanctions, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, was not up for negotiation.
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“The DPRK’s status as a nuclear weapons state is the line of no retreat and it is a stark reality whether anyone recognises it or not,” she said.
North Korea started its nuclear programme in the 1980s and agreed in 1994 to freeze and eventually abandon it in return for help building two civilian nuclear power reactors. But Pyongyang never stopped enriching uranium and in 2003 it became the first state to withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and started developing nuclear weapons openly.
Six-party talks involving the United States, China, Russia, Japan, North Korea and South Korea produced a succession of agreements but the process fell apart in 2009 when Pyongyang launched a number of nuclear and missile tests. By 2017, North Korea had conducted six underground nuclear tests and developed intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the United States.
The following year saw an apparent breakthrough when Donald Trump met Kim in Singapore and they issued a joint statement committing to “the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”. But when they met again in Hanoi in 2019, Trump expanded his demand from a partial freeze on producing fissile material to the unilateral surrender of Pyongyang’s entire nuclear programme and the talks collapsed.
North Korea has accelerated its nuclear programme since then and is now believed to have at least 50 nuclear warheads and a variety of missile systems to deliver them. Two years ago, Kim formally abandoned Pyongyang’s aspiration to unite the Korean peninsula, rejecting talks with the South Korean government.
China’s official position remains in favour of denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula but the aspiration was not mentioned in Chinese statements when Kim met Xi in Beijing last year or when foreign minister Wang Yi visited Pyongyang in April. The White House account of Trump’s meeting with Xi last month said they discussed Korean denuclearisation but the Chinese account did not refer to it.
Although Trump is eager to resume his talks with Kim, coercive denuclearisation no longer appears plausible, leaving some kind of engagement on arms control and peace on the Korean peninsula the most promising route. Managing the North Korean nuclear threat has become more urgent as South Korea and Japan begin to doubt the reliability of Washington’s nuclear umbrella and wonder if they need to develop their own deterrent.
Further nuclear proliferation in east Asia is a threat to China and Xi will wish to encourage efforts at engagement and de-escalation, as well as ensuring that Beijing has some influence over any negotiations Trump initiates with Kim. At the Ulaanbaatar Dialogue, a security conference in the Mongolian capital last week, South Korea’s unification minister Ching Dong-young proposed new, four-party talks involving Pyongyang, Seoul, Washington and Beijing.
“Gradually, this framework should be expanded to include other northeast Asian countries such as Mongolia, Japan and Russia,” he said.
“If the three pillars – restoring trust between the two Koreas, institutionalising a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, and advancing multilateral dialogue in northeast Asia – move forward simultaneously, we can build a new peace order across northeast Asia.”
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