Did China’s Xi visit North Korea because the bold Kim Jong Un wants to “confront the US”?

Hong Kong – Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up a two-day visit to North Korea on Tuesday by vowing to deepen ties and expand cooperation with Kim Jong Un. Xi called the summit a “historic new beginning.”

Aside from the optics and the carefully recorded messages from the Chinese and North Korean governments, experts say the real motive for Xi’s visit was to check on the emboldened Kim. – his nuclear-armed neighbor.

“Never before have the Chinese faced a problem with North Korea,” Bob Carlin, a former US State Department official who has been a North Korea analyst for more than 50 years, told CBS News on Wednesday.

He said that while North Korea has long felt “superpowered, that is not Kim’s view these days.”

“Since 2023, Kim has completely changed the landscape of North Korea’s strategic policy,” Carlin said. “For so many years it was to involve the US, to get to know the US that is gone. They want to deal with the US”

Kim sees herself as “a leader in this movementand in time he will face the Americans,” predicted Carlin.

That presents Xi with a problem, he said, because China knows if Kim ends up clashing with the US, “it will involve the Chinese in some way, shape or form. So they need to know what he’s up to, and they need to advise him. [Kim] and catch him when they can.”

Can China, or anyone, contain North Korea?

Relations between China and North Korea have been strained since Xi took power in 2012. Kim took charge of his country about a year ago, after the death of his wife father Kim Jong Il. But Carlin said the Chinese government had maintained close ties with Kim’s uncle, Jan Song-thaek, who was the country’s second most powerful official and “considered an adviser to Kim.”

He was released in 2013 on Kim’s orders, and a few years later the Chinese supported United Nations sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons program.

Carlin said a “poisonous current” still runs through Xi and Kim’s personal relationship, but both sides have accepted that, as neighbors, they will have to get along.

“Things can get really bad at times, really bad, but they have to come back to some kind of balance. That’s the only way they can,” Carlin said. “It makes sense for them to stand together and cooperate. They don’t have to love or trust each other, but they need to stand together to achieve certain goals.”

Kim described the relationship as “strong” this week, while Xi urged both countries to firmly protect their sovereignty, security and development. The leaders discussed trade and economic relations, as well as ways to promote tourism, Chinese investment and academic exchanges, according to an official readout.

But Carlin said “what we should be concerned about,” is military cooperation between China and North Korea.

“It’s stirring the pot, and China and North Korea are happy to stir the pot,” he said, adding that next month’s 65th anniversary of the existing defense pact between Beijing and Pyongyang will likely provide a true indication of whether this week’s summit was indeed friendly, depending on what is announced.

If China announces, for example, the sale of military hardware, such as air defense systems, to the North, or joint naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, it will be a clear indication of the true depth of the relationship.

Russian feature

Xi’s visit was also seen as an attempt to balance Russia’s influence in North Korea, which has grown during Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In exchange for weapons and thousands of North Korean soldiers, Russia provided Pyongyang with much-needed financial aid. Moscow also sees North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, giving Kim confidence as he doubles down on efforts to expand his country’s weapons program, which is considered more advanced than Iran’s.

“China does not want Russia and North Korea to come out of the corner and arrange anything between them,” said Carlin. Beijing wants to “become a control stick…

A few days before Xi’s visit, Kim launched a new nuclear weapons manufacturing plant and visited a uranium enrichment facility. A day before the Chinese leader’s arrival, Kim’s powerful sister Kim Yo Jong declared that North Korea’s nuclear status “cannot be reversed.”

Kim is building new enrichment plants, extracting the most dangerous plutonium,” Carlin said. “So he’s building nuclear weapons that are really heavy. And you have enough missiles to detonate and carry all those nuclear weapons all over South Korea and Japan. So you feel a lot of power, and the question is how and when do you think it will be time to use it.”

Carlin believes that Kim has three goals: To reduce the position of the US in the world, to unite the Korean Peninsula and to be treated as a peer by China and Russia, so that they can no longer treat him and his regime as a small player.

“The Chinese can’t do anything if they’re on the sidelines, so they have to get back into the game,” said Carlin, adding that with this trip, “Xi was able to plant the flag again.”

The Chinese leader’s visit comes after back-to-back summits in Beijing last month, where Xi hosted President Trump and, a few days later, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Neither government has said whether Xi was delivering a message on behalf of the White House during his stay in North Korea, and Mr. expressed a clear desire after his last talks with Kim to see talks start again.

Mr. Trump and Kim met three times during the US leader’s first term, but since their last meeting in 2019, North Korea has tested more than a dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Kim has made it clear that he is not even willing to discuss the idea of ​​denuclearization.

Carlin believes there is nothing the US can offer at this stage to convince Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

“We completely lost that opportunity,” he said, when the talks between Mr. Trump and Kim have been falling apart for the past seven years.