Chinese President Xi Jinping will make a state visit to North Korea on 8–9 June, his first trip to Pyongyang in nearly seven years and his first overseas journey of 2025. The visit, confirmed by both Chinese state broadcaster CCTV and North Korean state media KCNA, comes at the invitation of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Xi last visited the North Korean capital in June 2019, when he held summit talks with Kim and received full military honours.

The trip follows a period of intensive diplomacy for Xi, who hosted both US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing last month. That sequence of meetings — Washington, Moscow, and now Pyongyang — is widely seen as Beijing's effort to position itself as the central power broker on the Korean Peninsula. China is North Korea's only formal treaty ally, bound by a 1953 mutual defence pact that guarantees support if either country is attacked, and this year marks the 65th anniversary of that agreement. The two countries also share a 1,400-kilometre land border. Despite that closeness, relations were strained by North Korea's deep isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic and by Kim's growing military partnership with Moscow — which has seen Pyongyang send troops and weapons to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Passenger train and air services between Beijing and Pyongyang have only recently resumed, though Chinese tourists remain largely excluded.

"The message implicit from the Chinese side is that we are still the principal actor when it comes to North Korea," said John Delury, a senior fellow at the Asia Society, adding that Russia is also an intended audience for the visit. Analysts expect Kim to seek expanded trade across the land border and greater numbers of Chinese visitors to fill newly built resorts. This week, North Korean state media reported that Kim had toured a newly operational nuclear material production factory and called for an "exponential" expansion of the country's atomic arsenal — a signal, experts say, of his negotiating posture ahead of the meeting.

Why this matters: Xi's visit arrives at a moment when Korean Peninsula diplomacy is at a standstill. Since Kim declared an end to reunification efforts with South Korea in December 2024 and labelled its people a "sworn enemy," all communication between the two Koreas has been severed. South Korea's minister of unification has said he hopes Xi will encourage Kim to resume dialogue with both Seoul and Washington. The Trump administration has previously expressed openness to renewed talks with Pyongyang. Beijing has long officially supported denuclearisation of the peninsula, though analysts note that China has significantly softened that stance in recent years — a shift that was subtly on display last month when a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson declined to directly confirm a US–China agreement on the issue. Whether Xi arrives with enough leverage — or willingness — to shift Kim's calculus remains the central question.