During a rare two-day summit on Monday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping assured Kim Jong Un that Beijing remains fully committed to supporting his regime and safeguarding their shared interests.
Marking his first visit to North Korea in seven years—and his first international trip of the year—Xi signaled the need for both nations to strengthen strategic ties. According to an official Chinese summary, Xi said he felt a "special sense of closeness" during the visit.
Their last meeting took place in September of last year, when Kim Jong Un traveled to Beijing to attend a massive military parade alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Since then, Pyongyang has reopened its borders with China and stepped up cross-border exchanges that had been frozen during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Air China resuming flights between the two capitals in March.
Xi's current visit to North Korea comes just weeks after his high-profile meetings with President Donald Trump and Putin.
China is likely to use the summit to seek Pyongyang’s alignment on Japan and gain leverage in the China-North Korea-Russia trilateral relationship, while North Korea may press for economic or strategic concessions, analysts say.
These regional tensions were on full display last month. According to a report by Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun, during the recent U.S.-China summit, Xi became visibly emotional and vocal while discussing Japan's rising military expenditures with Trump.
Sino-Japanese relations have deteriorated sharply since last November, when Sanae Takaichi hinted that Tokyo could launch a military response if China were to attack Taiwan—the democratic, self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own territory.
Hours after concluding his two-day visit to China, Trump held a phone call with Takaichi, during which the two leaders reaffirmed an "ironclad" bilateral alliance, according to Takaichi.
Furthermore, Pyongyang's deepening ties with Moscow have caused growing unease in Beijing. In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, North Korea scaled up its military cooperation with the Kremlin. This burgeoning relationship was formalized in 2024 with a mutual defense pact signed during Putin’s state visit to Pyongyang.
A chilling of relationships became apparent when Beijing and Pyongyang barely commemorated the 75th anniversary of their bilateral ties in October 2024. This followed the Chinese ambassador's absence from North Korea's founding anniversary celebrations the month prior, which stands in striking contrast to Pyongyang’s increasingly warm relationship with Moscow.
Feng Chongyi, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney, told NTD: "China now finds itself in a competition with Russia and Putin. Previously, North Korea relied primarily on China's support, but now it is drawing closer to Russia, causing China's influence over Pyongyang to steadily shrink."
“The relationship between Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping is simply not as close as the one between Putin and Kim," he said.
Feng mentioned that Xi's current visit to North Korea is driven by a desire to compete with Putin for influence, hoping to prevent North Korea from throwing itself entirely into Russia's embrace.
He added that the wars in Ukraine and Iran demonstrate that China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran form a "new Axis of Evil" that supports one another. However, due to their differing ideologies, they remain strange bedfellows.