Why Xi Jinping now accepts Kim Jong Un at the grown-ups table

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. The Economist 6 min Read 28 Sept 2025, 01:29 PM IST North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a meeting in Beijing, China, on September 4, 2025, in the photo released by the official Korean News Agency North Korea. (Photo: Reuters) Summary China is resentment recovery with North Korea. There is an unusual activity in tumen, a small Chinese city on the border with North Korea. When the economist visited in recent days, it could be seen that builders and cranes were working on customs and immigration centers at the end of a new cross-border bridge. Elsewhere on the border, similar efforts began in the months before Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, attended a military parade in Beijing in early September. And the work continued in the weeks since China was preparing to revive the borderline trade, despite the UN sanctions to combat North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. These and other signals indicate that China and North Korea feel more friendly after an ominous decade in which Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, intensified the sanctions under US pressure. China has Mr. Kim treated with unprecedented respect during the parade, which allowed him and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader, to flank Mr Xi. To a large part of the world, it suggested that the three include an anti-Western alliance. Yet Mr. Xi’s re-infection with North Korea also its discomfort over the new power dynamics within the trio. The Kremlin was the main sponsor of North Korea during the Cold War. Then, most of the time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China has taken on the role. It remains the largest economic partner of North Korea, which accounts for more than 90% of its global trade and large amounts of oil (although much of North Korea’s trade with China and Russia is not reported). For the past two years, Mr. Kim and Mr. However, Putin approached. North Korea sent troops and weapons to help Russian forces in Ukraine and Russia return fuel, food and military technology. Last year, the two countries signed a treaty of mutual defense. Mr. Putin also appears that North Korea has provided military assistance that China will not provide, including aircraft missiles and drone technology. He said he signed an agreement to deliver Russian fighter aircraft. This is all worrying for Mr. Xi, even though China’s relationship with Russia has also strengthened due to the war in Ukraine. China shares the concern of Russia that a collapse of the North Korean regime could lead to a united, democratic, pro-Western Korea. The development can bring American troops (of which there are 28,500 in the south) to the eastern country borders of China. At the same time, Chinese leaders have tried to prevent North Korean military aggression against the south, which is one of China’s largest trading partners and foreign investors. China also still hopes to prevent North Korea from obtaining a fully functional nuclear arsenal, for fear that it can do Japan and South Korea (both American allies) to do the same. Russia seems less interested in limiting North Korea’s military ambitions, conventional or nuclear power. Some officials even suspect that Russia North Korea may have helped to achieve recent progress in the atomic weapons program. To Mr. To discourage Kim from swinging further to Russia, Mr. XI now relaxes some of the trade ties with North Korea that he imposed during President Donald Trump’s first term. Reported bilateral trade fell by about half to $ 2.4 billion in 2018 after China began enforcing new UN sanctions. It then dropped further during the Covid-19 pandemic. But in the first eight months of 2025, it returned to pre-pandemic levels, which rose 28% year-on-year to $ 1.6 billion. There were also signs of North Korean workers returning to Chinese factories and from North Korea raising coal export to China -despite the UN sanctions aimed at both activities. South East of Tumen shows satellite images that China is building a giant new customs facility near the point where the Chinese, Russian and North Korean borders gather. Furthermore, the work resumed at the end of a new border border bridge. Mr. Xi also publicly began to play his concerns about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. China’s official reading of his recent meeting with Mr. Kim did not mention Chinese support for ‘Denuclearization’ of the Korean Peninsula, despite the inclusion of such wording in statements about previous meetings, in 2018 and 2019. North Korea did not object to the wording at the time, but was as a serious political provocation ‘to the past when it came to a jaw between China, Japan South Korea appeared in the last year. According to Chinese experts, China still pleads a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons. But given the reinforcing ties between Messrs. Putin and Kim, the progress is unlikely without a solution of the conflict in Ukraine, arguing a recent article by experts from two Chinese universities and a thinking linked to the Ministry of State Security. According to China, China should rather focus on preventing a military collision between North and South Korea, and on the exploitation of tension between America and its Asian allies. China’s other concern is that Mr. Trump the efforts to deal with Mr. Kim to negotiate, can resume. Mr. Trump met him three times in his first term and publicly proposed a fourth meeting. Mr. Kim said on September 21 that he was open for it if America had abandoned the claims of denuclearization. The chances of giving up his nukes are even slimmer than before. The progress in its nuclear program set aside, North Korea is afraid of the distance of weapons that he believes can guarantee the regime’s survival. Nevertheless, if the war in Ukraine ends soon, China fears to be isolated as Russia and North Korea become involved with America again. On September 23, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN Safety Council that China could force Russia to end the conflict if he wanted. (China reckons it is impartial to the war.) In the end, China’s efforts to build economic leverage with North Korea may not pay off. It struggled to influence North Korea, even if it was more swinging. Mr Kim does understand that China would never cause his country to collapse. Chinese leaders tried in vain to encourage market reforms, in the hope that regional integration would reduce military tension. And on the occasions where China applied more direct pressure, North Korea usually draws it off. In 2009, a Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister compared North Korea to a ‘spoiled child’ after firing a rocket over Japan. A few weeks later, China publicly condemned a North Korean nuclear test. It is not even clear that North Korea will give China’s efforts to expand connections across the border. Unlike the effective rhetoric against Russia, North Korea Lou sounded in his statements about Mr. Kim’s recent meeting with Mr. Xi. China may have to offer benefits, not just on trade, but on a larger political scale, because that’s what Russia is doing, says Jenny Town of the Stimson Center, an American thinking tank. She suggests that Mr. Kim formal involvement can seek multilateral groups involving China, such as the Brics. This may explain the lack of activity towards the tumen when the economist visited. The Chinese authorities suggest that the new facilities around the bridge will be completed by next year. However, at the end of North Korea there were no signs of construction. Meanwhile, about 80 miles away, since May on both sides of the first road bridge between Russia and North Korea. © 2025, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. Of The Economist, published under license. The original content can be found on www.economist.com, captures all business news, market news, news events and latest news updates on Live Mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. More Topics #China Read Next Story