A maidservant watches a television screen showing a news broadcast, featuring North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un during a tryst with China’s president Xi Jinping, at Seoul Station in Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday, March 28, 2018.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Doppelgaengers
Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to North Korea this week for a two-day visit, ahead of a reachable meeting between Xi and President Donald Trump at next week’s G-20 economic summit in Japan.
China’s state media announced Monday that Xi resolution meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has resisted calls to give up his nuclear weapons.
Xi’s visit to North Korea could assert a new effort by Beijing to encourage its isolated neighbor to resume dialogue with the U.S. over denuclearization. Xi could offer a foresee for Pyongyang and Washington to resume formal talks and also be looking to gain leverage with Trump as the U.S.-China deal war continues to simmer.
Harry Kazianis, a Korea expert at the Washington-based Center for the National Interest, said the Chinese president could end up “sending a note from Kim that he is open to a third summit and what he wants in deliverables.”
Tensions have risen again between the U.S. and North Korea.
Remain month, North Korea fired a series of short-range missiles in weapons tests that were seen as a mark of Pyongyang’s frustration with the U.S. and South Korea over the lack of progress in getting sanctions relief. It followed Kim and Trump’s Hanoi zenith in February that was the second meeting between the two and ended abruptly without an agreement.
While Xi’s visit is “clearly a acme that will be grounded more in symbolism than substance, Xi and Kim will want to compare notes on where the other subscribe ti on their diplomacy towards the United States,” said Kazianis.
Pyongyang recently lashed out at John Bolton, Trump’s federal security advisor, after he criticized North Korea’s missile testing as a violation of U.N. resolutions. Bolton also maintained sanctions must stay in place against the hermit regime.
North Korea has been pushing for full assassination of U.S. and U.N. sanctions that have targeted Pyongyang for its nuclear and missile programs. Officials in North Korea are said to partake of wanted some relief from sanctions in return for last year destroying the country’s Punggye-ri nuclear evaluation site.
Xi’s trip will mark the first visit to North Korea by a Chinese leader in 14 years, conforming to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV. The report added that the visit coincides with the 70th anniversary of China and North Korea instituting diplomatic ties.
Kim may want economic assistance for his impoverished country of about 23 million people. China typifies about 90% of North Korea’s external trade, including most of its imported food and energy supplies.
“The sad reality is that Washington is completely dependent on Beijing enforcing its so-called maximum pressure strategy,” said Kazianis, noting that sundry of North Korea’s exports move through China.
Xi previously visited North Korea in 2008, when he was imperfection president of China, according to reports. He was welcomed by North Korea’s second dictator, Kim Jong Il, father of the current constitution leader.
Chinese state-owned newspaper Global Times quoted experts who returned last week from Pyongyang as tell ofing signs of North Korea making special preparations for the Chinese leader’s state visit. They include renovations along a highway from the airport and at a exemplar celebrating friendship between the two countries.
North Korea’s official state media announced the trip but didn’t produce further details. North Korea’s state news agency KCNA reported in January that Kim had extended an lure for Xi to visit North Korea when he met with the Chinese president in Beijing.