[Kim’s visit to China this week will renew questions about what happens post-Singapore. Though Trump has taken great pains to cast last week’s summit as an unqualified success, the next steps are not clear.]
By Emily Rauhala
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This
image taken from China's CCTV on June 19, 2018, shows Chinese President
Xi
Jinping with
his wife Peng Liyuan at right and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
with his wife
Ri Sol-Ju at left during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the
People
in Beijing. (CCTV via AP Video) (Anonymous/
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BEIJING
— North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un is in China. Again.
Kim arrived on Tuesday for his third visit to
China in the span of three months, meeting with President Xi Jinping at the
Great Hall of the People, in the heart of Beijing.
The visit comes a week after President Trump
met with Kim in Singapore and a day after the United States confirmed it will
cancel what Trump called “war games” with South Korea scheduled for August.
News of Kim’s trip came just hours after Trump threatened China with tariffs on
$200 billion worth of goods.
On Tuesday evening, Kim and his wife, Ri Sol
Ju, were welcomed by Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan. Pictures from the event show
Kim and Xi shaking hands in front of a row of Chinese and North Korean flags —
a visual echo of Kim and Trump’s much-photographed handshake in Singapore.
Xi reportedly praised the outcome of the
Singapore summit, calling it an “important step toward the political solution
of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue,” according to the party-controlled
press.
Though details are still scarce, the timing and
staging of Kim’s trip sends a clear message about Beijing’s place at the center
of East Asian diplomacy — and its power over Pyongyang.
With U.S.-China trade ties on the rocks, Kim
is well positioned to play both powers, talking sweet to Trump while pursuing a
closer relationship with Xi.
“Although it seems there is a booming romance
between Kim Jong Un and Trump, Kim understands the hierarchy. He knows that Xi
is the Asian Godfather,” said Yanmei Xie, a China policy analyst at Gavekal
Dragonomics, an economic research firm in Beijing.
“He is making a pragmatic calculation that
China can provide economic assistance to integrate North Korea diplomatically
and economically into Northeast Asia.”
Kim’s visit to China this week will renew
questions about what happens post-Singapore. Though Trump has taken great pains
to cast last week’s summit as an unqualified success, the next steps are not
clear.
What has come out of the summit, so far,
seems like a version of China’s “dual suspension” strategy — a plan that asks
North Korea to suspend nuclear testing in return for a suspension of U.S.
military exercises.
With testing halted, for now, and August’s
war games off, China may be willing to cut North Korea some slack.
In Beijing, Kim is likely to ask Xi to ease
up on economic sanctions — something the United States strongly opposes.
Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
said in Beijing at a news conference with Foreign Minister Wang Yi that China
“acknowledged that the sanctions regime that is in place today will remain in
place until such time as that denuclearization is in fact complete.”
But the problem is that there is no consensus
on what “denuclearization” means.
The United States wants North Korea to
abandon the nuclear weapons program that it took years to build — an outcome
experts see as extremely unlikely.
“There is a regional effort, a sort of
Northeast Asia coalition of make-believe, to maintain the fiction that the
North Korea will de-nuke as long as Americans keep talking to it,” Xie said.
China is less focused on getting Kim to give
away his weapons than on getting him to fall into line. It may eventually use
trade and investment to keep him onside, experts said.
With North Korea still struggling under
United Nations sanctions, “China’s political and economic support is still
highly important,” said Zhao Tong, a North Korea expert at the
Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.
The question now, Zhao said, is “how can
China help North Korea develop its economy?”
China can also help Kim normalize North
Korea’s diplomatic status. That starts with treating him less like a rogue
dictator and more like a visiting statesman — a progression that can be seen in
his recent visits.
On Kim’s first visit as leader, in March, he
arrived unannounced aboard an armored train. Beijing did not disclose his
presence, or publish photos, until he left.
He met Xi a second time in May in the Chinese
port city of Dalian. Photographs of the two leaders strolling and chatting by
the seaside were not released until Kim was on his way home.
On Tuesday morning, there were reports of
tight security around Beijing. Not long after, Chinese state media confirmed
that Kim would be in town.
Then that evening, Chinese media released
photographs of Kim meeting Xi at the Great Hall of the People, where he often
greets visiting dignitaries and heads of state — the first time that photos of
Kim in China have been released while a visit was in progress.
A South Korea Unification Ministry official
said Tuesday that officials were closely monitoring any possible statements
from Kim and the Chinese leadership.
The White House will no doubt be watching,
too.
Brian Murphy in Seoul and Shirley Zhao and
Yang Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.
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