Xi visits North Korea to reaffirm China’s senior role in alliance

Xi Jinping's rare trip to Pyongyang put China back in the position it has tried to preserve for decades: North Korea's senior partner, not its equal. The two-day state visit, set for June 8 to June 9, was Xi's first trip to North Korea in nearly seven years, his first international trip of 2026, and his first summit with Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang since June 2019.

The timing carried more weight than ceremony. China is North Korea's only formal treaty ally, and 2026 marked the 65th anniversary of the 1961 China-North Korea Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. Chinese officials said Xi and Kim would exchange views on bilateral ties and issues of common concern, underscoring Beijing's effort to reassert leverage over a relationship that has frayed since the COVID-19-era trade freeze.

That leverage has been under pressure from Pyongyang's deepening ties with Moscow. Russia and North Korea signed a comprehensive strategic partnership in Pyongyang on June 18 and June 19, 2024, a development that later fed reports of North Korean troop deployments to support Russia's war in Ukraine. Those moves sharpened concern in Seoul, Washington and Tokyo about a broader China-Russia-North Korea alignment and about how far Kim could go before Beijing moved to pull him back.

For Beijing, the visit was not simply a display of socialist solidarity. It was an exercise in managing a smaller, more unpredictable partner at a moment when North Korea has more external options than it has had in years. Analysts expected China to use the summit to offer economic and political incentives aimed at restoring influence that has been strained by border closures, reduced trade and Pyongyang's increasing reliance on Moscow.

The summit also reflected a regional balance that China does not want to lose. Xi last visited North Korea in 2019, and since then Kim has used a sharper, more assertive diplomacy to widen his room for maneuver. By returning now, Xi signaled that Beijing intends to keep the initiative, limit North Korea's drift toward Russia and remind Pyongyang that its most important relationship still runs through China.