Xi uses a rare North Korea visit to court Pyongyang's backing on Taiwan

Chinese President Xi Jinping's publicized his first visit to North Korea in seven years to signal closer strategic alignment with Pyongyang in a front-page article commentary that analysts read as Beijing lining up North Korean support for a possible move on Taiwan. 

"The two sides should firmly support each other in safeguarding their national sovereignty, security and development interests, and should jointly safeguard regional peace and stability, international fairness and justice, and the postwar international order," Xi wrote in the commentary, published Monday in the North's main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.

"National sovereignty and security" is the language China typically reserves for territorial questions such as Taiwan, and some analysts see the line as a reminder that the island is Beijing's overriding concern and a measure of how much it values North Korean military and political support. Xi arrived in Pyongyang on Monday and is to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during the two-day state visit. Experts say it is not far-fetched that, in a Taiwan crisis, North Korea could mount provocations against South Korea to pin down U.S. Forces Korea and other U.S. assets on the peninsula.

Xi also made a point of noting that this year marks the 65th anniversary of the 1961 Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, whose Article 2 commits each side to automatic intervention.

It provides that "in the event of one of the Contracting Parties being subjected to the armed attack by any state or several states jointly and thus being involved in a state of war, the other Contracting Party shall immediately render military and other assistance by all means at its disposal." Because what counts as an "armed attack" is open to interpretation, the clause could in practice serve as grounds for military aid to either side in a war.

Xi's call to "faithfully implement the important common understandings" between the two countries can be read in the same light. At a U.S.-China summit on May 14 and 15, Xi pressed President Donald Trump with a blunt question: Would the United States defend Taiwan if China attacked it?

Analysts at home and abroad say that if the so-called Davidson Window — the prospect, named for former U.S. Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral Philip Davidson, that China could move on Taiwan from around 2027 — were to materialize, Beijing might ask North Korea for a diversionary operation on the peninsula or, at the least, military support. Washington's concern is that the North could stage armed provocations against the South to split U.S. force projection between Taiwan and the peninsula, or to keep South Korea from functioning as a rear support base.

If Monday's article was indeed written with a Taiwan contingency in mind, it could signal that China intends to use its alliance with the North to limit the role of the South Korea-U.S. alliance.

North Korea answered in an editorial on the same front page, invoking "territorial integrity." "Our people sincerely hope that the Chinese people, rallied firmly around the Communist Party of China with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, will firmly safeguard their national sovereignty, territorial integrity and development interests," it said.

Kim made a similar pledge at the North Korea-China summit in Beijing last September, held around China's commemoration of its victory in World War II, saying he "fully supports China in safeguarding its national sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Monday's editorial can be read as Kim's reply to Xi's request for support.

Xi's article leaned heavily toward security cooperation. Citing the 1961 treaty, he wrote: "Taking the 65th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty on China-DPRK Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance as an occasion, we will strengthen communication, exchange and contacts among the parties, governments and militaries across various sectors and at various levels, and by faithfully implementing the important common understandings between the two sides, inject strong impetus into the development of China-DPRK relations." DPRK is the initialism of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 

The reference to militaries points to expanded joint exchange. Kim has focused in recent years on building up the North's navy, an area where cooperation could deepen.

"In the past, mindful of how the international community would see it, the two kept their military closeness below the surface and stressed only party and government exchanges," Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University, said.

"The biggest difference this time is that they have raised military-to-military exchange to a core task on the official diplomatic stage."

BY LEE YU-JUNG [[email protected]]