Xi Jinping in Pyongyang: Kim Jong Un Negotiates From a Position of Strength

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A Visit Seven Years in the Making

Xi Jinping touched down in Pyongyang on Monday for a two-day summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — his first visit to the country since June 2019. The trip marks a notable shift in Beijing's approach to its historically closest — and increasingly unpredictable — ally.

The two leaders last saw each other in Beijing in September 2025, when Kim attended a major military commemoration event. But a state visit to Pyongyang carries far greater symbolic weight. Xi has become increasingly selective about foreign travel since the COVID-19 pandemic. Making North Korea his first overseas destination of 2026 — after separately hosting both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — is a deliberate strategic choice.

"The trip ensures no one can reshape the peninsula's security architecture without his concurrence," said Seong-Hyon Lee, a senior fellow at the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations.

Kim's Hand: Stronger Than It Has Been in Years

Since Xi's last visit, the landscape has shifted dramatically — and almost entirely in Kim Jong Un's favor. North Korea dispatched thousands of troops to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, gaining in return what analysts broadly describe as military technology transfers, economic support, and a powerful new strategic partner willing to absorb international pressure alongside Pyongyang.

This new dynamic has given Kim room to maneuver. He is no longer merely choosing between Beijing and Moscow — he is managing both relationships from a position of real and growing confidence.

"North Korea is certainly gaining economically from what they're able to provide militarily to Russia," said John Delury, a senior fellow at the Asia Society. "That actually puts North Korea in a position where they may feel more confident to increase the volume of trade and investment with China."

Andrew Gilholm, an analyst at Control Risks, put it simply: Xi's visit is "the culmination of a good couple of 'comeback' years for Kim."

Nuclear Signals Timed to the Summit

Kim Jong Un left little to interpretation in the days before Xi's arrival. On Sunday, North Korea formally reaffirmed its status as a nuclear-armed state. On Thursday, Kim personally inspected a facility for weapons-grade nuclear material production and called for the country's atomic stockpile to grow at an "exponential" rate. State media reported that North Korea's capacity to produce bomb-grade fissile material has more than doubled over the past five years.

Then came the announcement of a 10,000-ton naval destroyer — a striking statement of military ambition, timed to land just as the summit was beginning.

And just 24 hours before Xi landed in Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un's sister and close political adviser Kim Yo Jong delivered what may have been the clearest signal of all. Speaking through state media, she declared that North Korea's nuclear status is permanent, non-negotiable, and entirely beyond the reach of any external visitor — including the leader of China.

She also directly rejected U.S. claims that Xi and President Trump, during their May summit in Beijing, had agreed on a shared framework for denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang, she said, had "the most accurate information" about what was actually discussed — and the U.S. account was simply false.

We reported on Kim Yo Jong's statement in detail in our earlier piece: Kim's Sister Draws a Hard Line

What Kim Wants from Beijing

Despite his confident posture, Kim cannot ignore economic reality. North Korea's capacity to raise living standards through internal resources alone is extremely limited, analysts say. That requires meaningful economic engagement with China — and Kim knows it.

Pyongyang's wish list reportedly includes the resumption of Chinese tourism to North Korea, a modest but important source of hard currency that collapsed when Kim sealed the borders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before 2020, Chinese visitors accounted for roughly 90% of all foreign tourists entering the country. Getting them back would meaningfully support North Korea's new five-year development plan, which explicitly targets tourism as a growth industry.

Other topics likely on the table include the opening of a long-completed but still-unused bridge over the Yalu River — which connects the two countries but has never been put into service — and potential joint economic development projects in the border regions shared by North Korea, China, and Russia.

What Xi Wants — and What He's Unlikely to Get

Beijing's core goal for this visit is strategic: to pull Pyongyang back toward China's sphere of influence after years of North Korea leaning increasingly toward Moscow. Xi is also reportedly interested in greater access to the Tumen River estuary along the shared border and navigational rights off North Korea's eastern coast.

What China almost certainly will not achieve is any rollback of North Korea's nuclear programme. In April, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Pyongyang — and the official statement notably omitted any reference to denuclearization, a striking departure from China's long-standing public position.

"If China's official readout omits the word 'denuclearization,' Beijing has effectively accepted North Korea as a nuclear state, folding the issue into its broader buffer strategy against the U.S.," Lee said.

Christopher Green, a Korea specialist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, assessed Kim's calculus bluntly: "He feels able to publicly pursue a marked expansion of North Korea's nuclear arsenal with a confidence that comes from knowing that as long as he doesn't foment outright instability in the region, Beijing will not try to stop him."

Trump in the Background

One question hovering over the summit is whether Beijing's renewed engagement might eventually give Kim the confidence — and the cover — to re-engage with Washington. Kim met with Xi before both of his summits with President Trump in 2018 and 2019, using Chinese backing as diplomatic ballast.

Trump has signaled openness to resuming talks, but Pyongyang has so far rebuffed those overtures, insisting that Washington first drop its long-standing demand for denuclearization as a precondition for any negotiation.

"From North Korea's perspective, there's belief that having China's backing provides a sense of security and confidence when seeking to improve relations with the United States," said Park Won Gon, a professor at Seoul's Ewha University.

Whether Kim eventually decides such an engagement serves his interests — on his terms — remains an open question.

A Lavish Welcome, Limited Concessions

Analysts broadly expect Kim to receive Xi with full ceremonial grandeur — as he did in 2019, when thousands of North Korean citizens held placards forming a giant portrait of Xi's face and a Chinese flag. The performance will be impressive. The substance, they caution, may be more modest.

"He's going to give Xi Jinping a welcome befitting of the head of state of their giant neighbor, but he's not going to play the pliant 'little brother,'" said Mike Chinoy, a former CNN journalist and author of a forthcoming book on North Korea.

The summit's tangible outcomes are likely to be economic in nature — trade frameworks, tourism agreements, perhaps some infrastructure discussions. On the larger questions of security architecture and nuclear weapons, Kim Jong Un has already given his answer, loudly and in advance.

Pyongyang intends to negotiate — if at all — from a position of growing nuclear strength.

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Sources

1. AP News – "What to know about a rare visit by China's Xi to North Korea for talks with Kim Jong Un" (June 2026): https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-china-kim-jong-un-xi-jinping-8ce14ec5cb46a3c805f182f8e7511b30
2. Reuters – "With China's Xi in North Korea, Kim to project confidence, defiance" (June 7, 2026): https://www.reuters.com/world/china/with-chinas-xi-north-korea-kim-project-confidence-defiance-2026-06-07/
3. Udumbara.net – "Kim's Sister Draws a Hard Line: North Korea Will Never Give Up Its Nuclear Weapons": https://udumbara.net/kims-sister-draws-a-hard-line-north-korea-will-never-give-up-its-nuclear-weapons
4. Radio Free Asia – North Korea coverage: https://www.rfa.org/english/north-korea
5. VOA News – North Korea-China Relations: https://www.voanews.com/z/5740

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