China sent its highest-level visit to North Korea in nearly five years Thursday, as Pyongyang seeks to strengthen relations with both Beijing and Moscow amid growing coordination between its neighbors and the United States.
Zhao Leji, China's third-highest ranked official, leads the delegation for a "goodwill visit" to the country to kickstart a "friendship year" marking 75 years of diplomatic ties.
The delegation, which includes officials from both government and Chinese Communist Party departments spanning defense, commerce and international affairs, was greeted with fanfare at the airport in Pyongyang where onlookers waved North Korean and Chinese flags, photos released by North Korean state media KCNA show.
The three-day visit was a "momentous occasion" in marking their diplomatic anniversary and strengthening "strategic and tactical cooperation to defend the common core interests," KCNA said.
Zhao hailed the China-North Korea relationship as of "great importance" to Beijing in talks that day with counterpart Choe Ryong Hae, where he also said the two sides would "strengthen strategic coordination" and "intensify high-level exchanges" this year.
Zhao is the highest-ranking Chinese visitor to the country since a state visit from leader Xi Jinping in 2019. Zhao leads China's rubber-stamp national legislature and is a member of its powerful seven-man Politburo Standing Committee.
The trip comes as both countries are wary of what they see as an increasingly hostile region – in particular growing security coordination between the US and its allies Japan and South Korea, which in turn seek to counter aggression from Beijing and Pyongyang.
The delegation also visits amid heightened global concern about North Korea, which has in recent months ramped up its bellicose rhetoric and continued its weapons testing. Pyongyang has also forged closer ties with Moscow, and begun supplying arms used in its war in Ukraine, the US and its allies say.
Those geopolitical fault lines are underscored as the Chinese delegation's visit coincides with a raft of Asia-focused diplomacy in Washington this week.
US President Joe Biden hosted a trilateral summit with the Philippines and Japan Thursday, a day after a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida where they pledged to advance coordination around countering challenges from China and North Korea.
In an interview with CNN ahead of that meeting, Kishida referred to China and North Korea's close ties with Russia and urged them to "maintain a free and open international order based on the rule of law."
As the ruling Chinese Communist Party's No. 3 official below Xi and Premier Li Qiang, Zhao's "goodwill" mission carries more weight than a visit from a government-level minister.
The visit is not expected to usher in diplomatic developments but will be an opportunity for China to reinforce its own deep and complex ties with North Korea – and convey to the US and the region that it has leverage there.
"(At a time) when the United States is trying to work more closely with Japan and South Korea, China wants to signal its own influence," said Liu Dongshu, an assistant professor at Hong Kong's City University.
Keep reading about Zhao's visit.
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