North Korean leader's return to Beijing highlights China’s clout

Home > National > Diplomacy

North Korean leader's return to Beijing highlights China’s clout

Published: 02 Sep. 2025, 18:43 Updated: 02 Sep. 2025, 18:53

MICHAEL LEE
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

In this photo released by Pyongyang's state-controlled Korean Central News Agency on Sept. 2, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, center, talks to officials inside his armored train on the way to Beijing to attend a Chinese military parade marking the 80th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II. [YONHAP]

[EXPLAINER]

When Chinese President Xi Jinping emerges on the balcony of Tiananmen Gate in Beijing to preside over a grand military parade on Wednesday, some of the foreign leaders accompanying him on the rostrum will be familiar faces to those who watched the same event a decade ago.

But it is the presence of one new guest — North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — that will turn heads in Seoul, Washington, Tokyo and beyond.

Kim’s trip to the Chinese capital to attend the ceremony, which marks the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, will be his sixth official meeting with Xi and his fourth with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will also be in attendance.

On the surface, the trio’s unprecedented appearance together alongside 23 other heads of state sends a message to Washington and its allies that a new, multipolar order is emerging from ongoing conflicts and tensions around the globe.

However, Xi’s decision to host Kim and Putin just weeks after South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met U.S. President Donald Trump may be less about solidarity against the United States than about underscoring China’s centrality to the growing ties between North Korea and Russia, and to other countries seeking diplomatic openings with the two isolated regimes.

Have the North and China always been close?

While Pyongyang and Beijing, whose alliance dates back to the 1950-53 Korean War, describe themselves as being “as close as lips and teeth,” ties have not been consistently warm since Kim succeeded his father in 2011 and Xi became China’s paramount leader the following year.

Their relationship was especially chilly after North Korea conducted its first nuclear test under Kim in February 2013 — its third overall.

Lee Sung-yoon, principal fellow at the Sejong Institute’s Center for Korean Peninsula Strategy, recalled that then-President Barack Obama asked him and other North Korea experts whether Beijing would end economic support for Pyongyang in response to the test.

“According to Obama, the Chinese said they were ‘going to teach that son of a [expletive] a lesson,’” Lee recalled. “He then asked us if Beijing would finally turn off the tap, but I said it was not likely, because the North and China need each other.”

For a while, it appeared the relationship had been permanently strained by what Beijing saw as Pyongyang’s insolence.

In his first six years in power, Xi did not meet Kim once. Speculation about a chill grew in 2015, when a series of private concerts in China by the North’s Moranbong troupe, led by Kim’s rumored former lover Hyon Song-wol, were abruptly canceled.

Experts believe Beijing was further angered by the North’s fourth, fifth and sixth nuclear tests in 2016 and 2017.

“China wants to project an image of being a responsible power and maintain regional stability,” noted Lee Dong-gyu, a research fellow and China expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “Pyongyang’s actions threatened these interests.”

In this photo released by Pyongyang's state controlled Korean Central News Agency, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, second from left, walks alongside Chinese President Xi Jingping inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 26, 2018, during his first visit to the Chinese capital. Kim's wife Ri Sol-ju is on the left, while Xi's wife Peng Liyuan is on the right. [YONHAP]

Why did Xi meet Kim in the past?

Relations appeared to thaw in 2018, after Kim used the PyeongChang Winter Olympics to make a dramatic return to diplomacy with South Korea and signaled openness to meeting Trump, then in his first term and escalating a trade dispute with Beijing.

“Xi realized that Beijing could lose leverage over Washington if talks between the North and the United States proceeded without Chinese involvement,” Lee Sung-yoon said. “So he invited Kim to China, showered him with expensive gifts and began playing up their communist camaraderie in official rhetoric.”

A month before the April 2018 inter-Korean summit, Xi met Kim in Beijing for the first time. They met again before and after Kim’s summit with Trump in Singapore that June. The two leaders held two more summits in 2019: in January, ahead of the failed U.S.–North Korea meeting in Hanoi, and in Pyongyang in June, when Xi became the first Chinese leader in 14 years to visit the North.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, left, walks alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping on a coastal road in Dalian during his second visit to China in early May 2018. [XINHUA/YONHAP]

At the time, observers assumed the two were coordinating their strategies for dealing with Trump. But Beijing’s more important aim, experts say, was to reinsert itself as a central player in negotiations over the Korean Peninsula.

“China wanted to demonstrate that any U.S.–North Korea breakthrough had to go through Beijing,” Lee Sung-yoon said.

Relations soured again after the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020, when North Korea sealed its borders — cutting off its main economic lifeline from China.

When restrictions were eased, Pyongyang signaled its priority was deepening ties with Moscow instead. In summits with Putin in September 2023 and June 2024, Kim reportedly offered matériel and manpower for Russia’s war in Ukraine in return for security guarantees and unspecified technological support.

Lee Dong-gyu noted that Pyongyang’s drift toward Moscow led to “unusual developments” with Beijing. China held no major events in 2024 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of bilateral ties, and removed a commemorative plaque in Dalian in May last year that marked Xi and Kim’s 2018 meeting there. North Korean state media also unusually denounced a joint gathering of foreign ministers from South Korea, Japan and China held the same month.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump during their summit at the White House in Washington on May 22, 2018. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

What’s the significance of Kim’s attendance?

Given this history, Xi’s joint appearance with Kim and Putin at Wednesday’s ceremony — which ostensibly signals alignment against the United States — may conceal diverging interests.

“Although Beijing frequently criticizes trilateral cooperation among Seoul, Washington and Tokyo, it is also wary that openly forming a bloc with Pyongyang and Moscow would accelerate a permanent anti-China coalition in the region,” said Lee Dong-gyu. He added that North Korea’s absence from Russia’s Victory Day parade on May 9 “was quite possibly due to pressure from China.”

“Xi knows China would lose credibility as a responsible global player if it openly aligns with two heavily sanctioned regimes,” Lee continued. “It would also erode its influence in the wider West and the global South.”

He argued that Xi’s invitation was more likely “an exercise of China’s leverage in response to Trump and to the continued strengthening of security ties between South Korea and Japan.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, left, shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on June 20, 2018, in this photo released by the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of Pyongyang's ruling Workers' Party. [YONHAP]

Xi may also be signaling to both Trump and South Korea’s president that “they cannot achieve a breakthrough with Pyongyang without considering Beijing’s position.”

However, he added that a joint summit and statement by Kim, Xi and Putin would “mark a shift from China’s resistance to forming a bloc with the other two regimes.”

Lee Sung-yoon said Kim’s decision to attend the parade — the first by a North Korean leader since 1959 — and appear in a multilateral setting, which his father and grandfather eschewed, shows confidence in pursuing a “higher goal” in his confrontation with the United States.

“Denuclearization is unlikely given the advances in the North’s weapons programs since the Hanoi summit. But by standing side by side with Xi and Putin, Kim could be sending a message to Washington that he has the backing of other great powers if he chooses to engage in talks on arms control and sanctions,” Lee said.

He added that Kim’s presence in Beijing could also be intended to coax greater support from Putin. “Kim doesn’t hold ceremonies for the families of North Korean soldiers killed in Ukraine for sentimental reasons, nor does he visit missile factories just to boast. He’s reminding Putin of the scale of his support — and that he can seek backing elsewhere if the rewards are not sufficient.”

In this photo released by the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of Pyongyang's ruling Workers' Party, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un waves farewell to Chinese officials in Beijing as he boards his armored train back to return home on Jan. 9, 2019, after the conclusion of his fourth summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. [NEWS1]

Lee said Kim may even bring his teenage daughter to Tiananmen Gate, following the precedent set by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, who brought his son, Nikolai, to the 2015 parade.

“If he does, he would be impressing upon the world that North Korea, like Belarus, is ruled by a dynasty that has all the time in the world — unlike Trump’s presidency — and that power will be passed to the next generation,” he said.

What does Wednesday’s parade symbolize?

Even without the guests, the Sept. 3 military parade carries heavy political significance in Beijing. Officially commemorating Japan’s defeat in 1945, it is in practice a tool for rallying nationalism at home and projecting China’s image as a victorious global power.

“It’s about sending a message that China will never again suffer the shame and suffering of the first half of the 20th century,” Lee Sung-yoon said. He added that the event “distorts history by portraying the Communist Party as the victor in the war, when in fact it was the Kuomintang-led government and the United States that bore the main fighting burden and ultimately defeated Japan.”

Chinese military vehicles carrying DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missiles, potentially capable of sinking a U.S. Nimitz-class aircraft carrier in a single strike, drive past Tiananmen Gate in Beijing during a military parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II on Sept. 3, 2015. [AP/YONHAP]

Inviting foreign leaders to take part in this pageantry of anti-Japanese symbolism is not new. In 2015, South Korean President Park Geun-hye stood beside Xi in Tiananmen Square for the 70th anniversary parade — a move that provoked private ire in Washington, experts say.

Lee Sung-yoon said the Chinese invitation was intended “to underscore Seoul and Beijing’s common grievances against Japan’s wartime atrocities, which tends to play well politically in South Korea, and draw the country away from alignment with Tokyo and Washington.”

Lee Dong-gyu added that this year’s invitation to President Lee Jae Myung was Beijing’s first test of whether Seoul would practice the “balanced diplomacy” Lee promised during his campaign.

“I believe it was wise for our president not to attend and to send National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik in his place,” he said, noting that the optics of Seoul’s leader standing alongside Kim and Putin “would not have been good.”

Lee Sung-yoon agreed it was “unlikely” Woo could have any meaningful contact with Kim. “It would be awkward, to say the least,” he said. “And as he is not a head of state, he would not be placed near the North Korean leader.”

Spectators wave Chinese and North Korean flags as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, left, and visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a mass gymnastic performance at the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang on June 20, 2019. [XINHUA/YONHAP]

BY MICHAEL LEE [[email protected]]