Before Chinese leader Xi Jinping landed in Pyongyang on Monday for a two-day summit with Kim Jong Un, he sent a mission statement to the people of North Korea.
China and North Korea should strengthen their alliance to promote an “equitable and orderly multipolar world,” he wrote in the guest column published Monday on the front page of North Korea’s state newspaper Rodong Sinmun.
For Xi, that means projecting a united, China-centered front against the West, while also reasserting Beijing’s influence over a North Korean dictator who has grown stronger through a tighter alliance with Russia.
For Kim, it means securing economic benefits that only China can offer, without surrendering his nuclear weapons.
Chinese state media released videos at midday Monday showing Xi’s plane arriving in Pyongyang, where Kim and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, greeted him alongside an honor guard and two children with flowers.