High-Ranking Chinese Official’s Visit to North Korea Shows Restrengthening of Bonds

Oct 13, 2025 - 09:59 Updated: Oct 13, 2025 - 09:57

High-Ranking Chinese Official’s Visit to North Korea Shows Restrengthening of Bonds

Chinese Premier Li Qiang attended the large-scale North Korean military parade held at night in Pyongyang on Oct. 10 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea as a show of Beijing’s restrengthening ties with Pyongyang.

Li took a front row seat next to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the parade, which featured the new Hwasong-20 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that the regime said is “the most powerful nuclear strategic weapons system,” according to its state news agency KCNA.

The military parade comes about a month after Kim attended China’s massive military parade held in Beijing, where the DF-61 ICBM capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads was unveiled. The event celebrated the anniversary of the ending of World War II.

At that event, Kim stood shoulder to shoulder with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia sent former President Dmitri Medvedev to Pyongyang’s parade held in Kim Il Sung Square. Vietnamese leader To Lam also attended, watching the parade next to Kim as well, according to images released by KCNA.

Li’s visit to North Korea was the first high-level visit by a Chinese official to the country since 2019. As the member of the Politburo Standing Committee, a body consisting of top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he is the second-highest ranking official after Xi.

Bruce Klingner, a senior fellow at the Mansfield Foundation, told The Epoch Times that Li’s visit to Pyongyang, after Kim’s trip to Beijing, is “another sign of restrengthening of relations between China and North Korea.”

“North Korea–Chinese relations have been a bit strained as North Korea reached out and strengthened its ties with Russia, obviously providing lots of military assistance to Moscow in return for food, fuel, funding, and some levels of military technology,” he said.

The Chinese “probably are a bit nervous of too strong relations between Russia and North Korea and “want to have some relations with North Korea in order to influence Pyongyang to the degree that Beijing can,” Klingner added.

Both China and North Korea are accused of helping Russia’s war against Ukraine.

China has been supporting Russia’s military industrial complex by supplying dual-use goods and purchasing Russian oil and natural gas to prop up Moscow’s wartime economy. China is also providing satellite intelligence to assist Russia’s missile strikes.

North Korea has been providing a steady supply of munition and has dispatched soldiers to Russia. It has supplied as many as 5.8 million individual munitions, according to a report published by the Open Source Center in April.

North Korea confirmed for the first time in April that it sent troops to Russia, reported the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The regime has sent over 14,000 North Korean soldiers, according to estimates by South Korean, Ukrainian, and U.S. intelligence agencies.

John Erath, the senior policy director for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told The Epoch Times that “China seeks partners as it competes strategically with the United States.”

“China wants to be a regional leader and induce more governments to align with its model of state control of information,” he said.

Both China and North Korea heavily control information and conduct surveillance over their own populations.

Schoolchildren walk below surveillance cameras in Akto, in China's western Xinjiang region, on June 4, 2019.Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

Li held a meeting with Kim upon arriving in Pyongyang on Thursday. At the meeting, Li said, “The China-DPRK friendship is entering a new chapter of the development of relations,” according to KCNA on Friday. North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Kim told Li that North Korea “would promote the more vigorous development of the DPRK-China relations in the common struggle for accomplishing the socialist cause.”

Xi sent a letter to Kim on Oct. 10 that stated, “China is ready to work with the DPRK” to deepen their cooperation “to serve the socialist causes of both countries,” according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Xi also stated, “No matter how the international situation changes, it remains the unwavering policy of the [CCP] and the Chinese government to maintain, consolidate and develop China-DPRK relations.”

During his trip to Pyongyang on Thursday, Medvedev, the chairman of Russia’s ruling United Russia Party, posted on Russian social media VKontakte that Pyongyang and Moscow are “united in their efforts to counter Western threats and to forge a truly just world order,” according to Russian news agency Tass.

Medvedev met with Kim on Saturday, vowing to “boost cooperation” and exchanging views on international and regional situations, according to KCNA.

Klingner at the Mansfield Foundation said that for the three countries, forming a three-way partnership and forging close ties has represented “a way to push back against the U.S. and its allies” in the region, including South Korea and Japan.

“It is a way of trying to undermine the U.S. achieving its strategic objectives in the Indo-Pacific,” said Klingner. “China doesn’t like the U.S. increasing its priority for the Indo-Pacific theater,” and along with Russia has been helping Pyongyang to join their efforts against the U.S., he said.

“It’s the assistance that particularly Russia is giving to North Korea as well as China’s ongoing trade with North Korea undermining the impact of international sanctions on Pyongyang,” he added.

A watchtower on the border in the North Korean village of Hyesan as seen from Changbai in China's northeast Jilin Province. Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

China has been North Korea’s economic lifeline since United Nations sanctions were placed on the regime in 2006 after its first nuclear test. Beijing is also the country’s largest trading partner. According to a Korea Trade Promotion Agency (KOTRA) report released in July, China accounted for 98 percent of North Korea’s total trade in 2024.

China and North Korea reopened a cross-border land route for postal services last month, China’s state postal service announced on Friday, as reported by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. The route reconnects China’s city of Dandong and North Korea’s border town of Sinuiju, which had been closed in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Both China and Russia used their veto power at the U.N. Security Council in 2024 to block the renewal of the U.N. experts panel charged with monitoring sanctions on North Korea.

Despite China and North Korea’s deepening ties and shared opposition to the United States, Erath said their bond is not strong.

“Chinese relationships with North Korea are of mutual convenience” and “will continue to fall short of alliances,” Erath said. “Russia, China, and North Korea have as many differences as common interests so any partnerships will likely prove ephemeral.”

“One key strategic question going forward will be how China and the U.S. approach competition” that could impact Beijing’s relations with North Korea as well as Russia, he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Truth Social on Friday that an additional 100-percent tariff will be imposed on all products from China over current tariff levels starting in November. The current tariff level on China for most goods is 30 percent, and negotiations over a permanent trade agreement have been ongoing. Trump also said the U.S. will impose export controls “on any and all critical software.”

The announcement came after Beijing on Oct. 9 placed export controls on critical rare earths, essential components to produce electronics products.

Trump was scheduled to meet Xi at an APEC meeting in South Korea at the end of October, but he said on Truth Social on Oct. 10 that “there seems to be no reason to do so.”