China, North Korea Deepen Ties, Drop Nuclear Talk
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- Jo Yong Won held talks with Wang Huning at the Pyongyang Assembly Hall on July 15, urging "militant unity" under the DPRK-China Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance.
- Wang Huning also met with Kim Jong Un during the trip, though KCNA published photos but no detailed readout of their discussions.
- Pak Thae Song, North Korea's premier and Presidium member, visited Beijing July 10–12 and met with Xi Jinping — part of a reciprocal exchange just one month after Xi's Pyongyang trip.
- Xi Jinping's June summit with Kim was his first North Korea visit in seven years and came shortly after he hosted both Trump and Putin in Beijing, the article notes.
- Officially the visits commemorate the treaty's 65th anniversary, though the 60th passed without similar fanfare — suggesting current geopolitics, not the milestone, is driving the urgency.
- Chinese readouts of both the Xi-Kim summit and Xi's meeting with Pak made no mention of denuclearization, even as a long-term goal — which the article frames as de facto recognition of North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.
- China has shifted from its longtime mediator role on Korean Peninsula issues to North Korea's side, giving Pyongyang more room to evade U.S. and U.N. sanctions even as Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo deepen trilateral coordination.
Why it matters: China's public silence on denuclearization, paired with back-to-back top-level visits, marks a concrete departure from its previous mediator posture and effectively grants North Korea diplomatic cover as U.S.–South Korea–Japan trilateral cooperation intensifies. For Washington and Seoul, Beijing is no longer a neutral broker it can rally around a denuclearization framework.
