Xi Jinping Makes First Pyongyang Trip Since 2019 to Reassert Chinese Leverage

Great-power competition over Pyongyang has cycled before: Mao’s China pulled Kim Il-sung back from Moscow’s shadow in the 1961 treaty, just as Xi now counters the 2024 Kim-Putin mutual-defence pact. Long-term, this reflects a pattern where weaker states exploit rivalry among larger patrons—the classic ‘playing the barbarians off each other’ that Korea practised between Ming China and Tokugawa Japan in the 1600s. For China, the visit fits its century-long objective of buffering the U.S. alliance system on the peninsula; for North Korea, it aligns with a 30-year quest (since the 1991 Soviet collapse) to secure resources without surrendering nuclear capabilities. Whether this moment shifts the 100-year arc depends on if Beijing quietly accepts a nuclear DPRK—if so, the regional non-proliferation order anchored in the 1968 NPT could erode further, echoing the way U.S. acquiescence to Israel’s undeclared arsenal in the 1970s gradually normalised selective proliferation. If not, the summit may be remembered as another ceremonial pause in an enduring triangular tug-of-war rather than a structural realignment.