Sawt Falasteen - China's Xi to visit North Korea next week

State broadcaster CCTV said that Xi would visit from June 8 to 9 at the invitation of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, his first trip to Pyongyang in seven years.

Beijing is a vital source of political and economic support to North Korea, which is one of the most diplomatically isolated countries in the world and under heavy international sanctions.

The upcoming meeting will be Xi's first official trip abroad this year, and comes after he hosted back-to-back summits with US President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin last month.

"China is meeting leaders from around the world, coordinating positions and playing a mediating role," Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea expert at South Korea's Kyungnam University, told AFP.

"As China's international standing rises, Beijing is likely seeking to draw Pyongyang more actively into its diplomatic orbit as a partner in advancing a more multilateral order."

Pyongyang depends on China for up to 95 percent of total trade and 85 percent of its exports, according to 2022 statistics from the National Committee on North Korea, a Washington-based think tank.

But North Korea has drawn closer to Russia in recent years, particularly since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Pyongyang sending thousands of troops and weapons to support the war effort.

In return, analysts say North Korea is receiving financial aid, military technology, food and energy, helping it circumvent sanctions over its banned nuclear programmes.

Xi's choice of Pyongyang for his first overseas trip of 2026 is "a deliberate visual rebuttal to the prevailing read in Western capitals that Pyongyang had quietly migrated into Moscow's orbit", said Seong-Hyon Lee from the George H. W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations.

- Managing the relationship -

Xi last met Kim in September, when he invited the North Korean leader and Russia's Vladimir Putin as guests of honour to a military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of the victory over imperial Japan in World War II.

In 2019, Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan were welcomed to North Korea with great pomp and fanfare to celebrate the two countries' "unbreakable friendship".

Prior to that trip, no Chinese leader had visited the North since Hu Jintao in 2005.

Beijing's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a visit to Pyongyang in April that China and Korea should "enhance coordination" on international and regional issues and "maintain close communication and interaction".

China's interests include keeping an eye on North Korea's nuclear programme, the advancement of which is "extremely rapid", Hong Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU) told AFP.

"This aspect needs to be managed. If North Korea acts in a provocative and belligerent manner, it could trigger regional conflict, which could run counter to China's interests," Hong said.

Kim vowed an "exponential" increase in nuclear military capabilities on Wednesday as he visited a new atomic facility, Pyongyang's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.

South Korea's foreign ministry has said it hopes exchanges between North Korea and China contribute to peace and stability, and that China can play a constructive role.

Pyongyang has repeatedly shunned efforts by the South Korean government to improve relations, calling Seoul its most "hostile" adversary.

Analysts have viewed Xi's recent diplomatic flurry as part of attempts to position China as a stable, strategic alternative to an unpredictable United States.

Traditional US allies, including Britain's Keir Starmer and France's Emmanuel Macron, have also come to Beijing.

However, Hong, of KINU, judged the chances that Xi might help broker a meeting between Trump and Kim as "very low".

U.Shaheen--SF-PST