Kim Jong Un Hosts Top Chinese Official in Pyongyang
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with Chinese Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning on Thursday, strengthening bilateral ties as China seeks to counterbalance North Korea's growing relationship with Russia.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly met with a top Chinese official on Thursday, July 16, as Pyongyang and Beijing continue to bolster relations. Wang Huning, a member of the Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, led a Chinese delegation that arrived in the North Korean capital earlier this week, North Korea's KCNA state news agency reported on Friday.
China has historically had a strained relationship with Pyongyang despite maintaining economic and security ties. North Korea's deepening links with Russia have prompted fresh concern in Beijing over its influence on the Korean peninsula. China has sought to reassert its position in the region in recent years. Chinese President Xi Jinping made his own visit to Pyongyang in June as part of this push, with Xi and Kim reaching an agreement on "developing relations."
According to KCNA, Kim said the latest meeting with Wang Huning highlighted the importance of the two nations' ties and declared it North Korea's "steadfast policy" to continue building "traditional friendly and cooperative relations" with China. In a speech on Thursday, Wang Huning said Beijing would "deepen exchanges and mutual learning" with Pyongyang and pledged that the two governments would work together to "promote peace and stability in the region and the world at large," according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.
On Wednesday, the Institute for the Study of War reported that North Korea had been making fresh efforts to deepen its ties with China in recent months, which it said was likely an attempt to gain foreign currency and help its ailing economy. North Korea remains one of the world's most isolated nations. Its roughly 26-million strong population faces high poverty levels and food shortages and is largely cut off from the international community. North Korea's isolation is often linked to the nation's guiding principle of "Juche," or self-reliance—the idea that it should be politically independent and economically and militarily self-sufficient.
