Xi visits North Korea as China seeks to pull Kim back into orbit

Xi Jinping will travel to North Korea for two days beginning June 8, his first visit to Pyongyang since June 2019 and his first overseas trip of 2026. The timing turns the trip into a test of leverage: whether Beijing is reasserting control over a vital neighbor, or scrambling to manage a partner that has become more useful, and more risky, to Moscow.

China says Xi will meet Kim Jong Un to discuss bilateral ties and issues of common concern. But the diplomacy carries a harder edge. Beijing has spent months trying to draw North Korea back into its orbit after the COVID-19 pandemic froze exchanges and after Kim deepened his ties with Vladimir Putin by sending troops and weapons to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The visit also arrives under pressure from Pyongyang’s nuclear program. North Korea unveiled a new facility believed to be a uranium enrichment plant shortly before the trip was announced, a reminder that the country is still expanding the weapons programs that have kept it under United Nations sanctions for years. That gives Xi a narrow set of goals: keep Kim engaged, keep China at the center of peninsula diplomacy, and avoid a strategic drift that hands Russia even more influence.

Beijing has already started restoring some of the old connective tissue. Passenger train service between Beijing and Pyongyang resumed in March 2026 after a six-year suspension, and Air China later restarted flights, though bookings have reportedly been limited to business travelers and exchange students. The practical links matter because China remains North Korea’s biggest trading partner and aid provider, even as Moscow has become a more important military patron since 2022.

The asymmetry is still stark. A 2022 estimate put China’s share of North Korea’s trade at up to 95 percent of total trade and about 85 percent of exports. Yet South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy has estimated that Russia may have paid North Korea as much as $14.4 billion since 2023 for troop deployments and exports of artillery, shells and missiles. That revenue gives Kim more room to resist pressure from Beijing than he had when Xi last visited.

Kim’s own signal to China came on September 3, 2025, when he attended a Beijing military parade marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War Two. Xi’s return now suggests Beijing wants to restore a symmetric posture on the Korean Peninsula, where North Korea is China’s only formal treaty ally and the two countries remain bound by a 65-year-old cooperation and mutual assistance treaty. For Xi, the message will be as much about control as solidarity: China still wants to be the principal outside power shaping North Korea’s next move.