Xi wraps up N Korea visit, hails deeper ties

Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday wrapped up his first visit to North Korea in seven years, saying it had established a deeper, more comprehensive understanding yielding a clearer path for development of ties, the official Xinhua news agency said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Xi agreed to expand cooperation in the areas of politics, economy and culture at a summit in Pyongyang that opened a new chapter in ties, the North’s official KCNA news agency said.

“The mutual understanding between China and North Korea has become deeper and more comprehensive, and the direction of future development has become clearer and more defined,” Xi told his hosts at a luncheon before his departure, Xinhua added.

Kim waved both hands as Xi’s plane taxied down the tarmac, in footage from China’s state broadcaster CCTV, after an enthusiastic send-off by Pyongyang residents, who lined the road to the airport, waving flags and shouting friendship slogans.

Earlier, the leaders jointly planted a fir tree in the grounds of a key political training school for party cadres, which Xinhua said symbolised “ever-renewing friendship”.

On the second day of his visit to China’s only formal treaty ally, Xi had also visited Pyongyang’s Sino-Korean Friendship Tower that commemorates Chinese soldiers who died in the Korean War, the agency added.

Both agreed to strive for closer strategic communication through visits by high-level officials, KCNA said.

Kim told Xi he would fully support the “One China principle,” which Beijing views as meaning that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one country, regardless of changes in the international situation, it added.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, although Taipei rejects the sovereignty claims.

Despite the expressions of goodwill, however, analysts saw contrasting priorities in the official summaries of the visit.

While Xinhua detailed proposals ranging from high-level exchanges to trade and agriculture, along with restoration of transport links, KCNA cast the summit more broadly as a pact of equal partners, the analysts said. Pyongyang stressed regime dignity and the neighbours’ “special relationship,” added Lim Eul-chul, a professor at South Korea’s Kyungnam University, while Beijing emphasised practical state-to-state ties and its initiatives for international order.

“North Korea removed elements that could make it look like a subordinate, dependent or beneficiary party, and rewrote relationship as one between equals,” said Hong Min, a fellow at Korea Institute for National Unification.