President Xi Jinping reassured Kim Jong Un of North Korea’s enduring importance to China as the two leaders met for talks in Beijing on Thursday, state media reported.
Kim has been on a rare foreign visit to China, his most important ally, joining Russia’s Vladimir Putin alongside Xi at a massive military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Kim and Xi held talks on Thursday evening at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, where the Chinese president said his country attached “great importance to the traditional friendship” with North Korea.
Beijing is “willing to maintain, consolidate and develop” bilateral ties, Xi said according to state news agency Xinhua.
“No matter how the international situation changes, this position will not change,” Xi was quoted as saying.
China’s relationship with North Korea was forged in the bloodshed of the Korean War in the 1950s, and Beijing is a vital source of diplomatic, economic and political support for the isolated nuclear state.
But Pyongyang has been moving closer to Russia recently — the two countries signed a mutual defence agreement last year, and North Korean soldiers are fighting in the Ukraine war.
Xi told Kim on Thursday that China was willing to “enhance high-level exchanges and strategic communication with the DPRK… deepen mutual understanding and friendship, strengthen interactions at all levels, and carry out practical cooperation in various fields”, Xinhua said, using the acronym for North Korea.
Kim’s armoured train was seen leaving Beijing shortly after the meeting ended, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.
Kim arrived in Beijing on Tuesday accompanied by his daughter Kim Ju Ae, his second reported trip abroad in six years and his first to China since 2019.
His attendance at the parade was the first time he was seen with Xi and Putin at the same event.
Despite the apparent closeness, Beijing and Pyongyang’s relationship is an uneasy one.
China’s support of Kim is predicated on the expectation he will not cause too much regional instability — an expectation that has not always been lived up to.
Kim enjoyed a brief bout of high-profile international diplomacy from around 2018, meeting US President Donald Trump and then South Korean president Moon Jae-in several times.
However, he withdrew from the global scene after the collapse of a summit with Trump in Hanoi in 2019.
Trump — who met Kim three times and once even said they had fallen “in love” — has voiced hope of meeting him again.
Since their failed 2019 summit, Pyongyang has declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state and recently rejected any suggestion of improving ties with Seoul.
