Foreign & Public Diplomacy

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: Chinese President Xi Jinping travels to North Korea, the U.S. military expands its list of blacklisted Chinese companies, and financial regulators move to close foreign stock-trading loopholes.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: Chinese President Xi Jinping travels to North Korea, the U.S. military expands its list of blacklisted Chinese companies, and financial regulators move to close foreign stock-trading loopholes.

Xi Jinping Meets Kim Jong Un

On Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up a two-day visit to North Korea, where leader Kim Jong Un greeted him with fanfare. It was Xi’s first visit to the country since 2019, and as Deng Yuwen wrote in Foreign Policy last month, his main priority lies with preventing North Korea from drifting too far into Russia’s orbit. So far, readouts from the event have consisted only of boilerplate announcements about increased cooperation and sustained friendship.

Since 1961, North Korea has been China’s only formal treaty ally, bound by a mutual defense pact forged in the aftermath of the Korean War, when Chinese intervention helped save the Kim regime. Yet Chinese-North Korean relations were strained for decades.

North Korea resented China’s perceived abandonment of socialism in the 1980s, its diplomatic recognition of South Korea in 1992, and what Pyongyang saw as inadequate Chinese assistance during a devastating famine in the 1990s.

For its part, China was angered by North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons but lacked the leverage to stop it. North Korean refugees also frequently cross into northeastern China.

Since 2018, Xi has done much to repair relations with North Korea, despite the COVID-19 pandemic interrupting travel. China has downplayed explicit references to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and has expanded trade and economic ties. Nevertheless,........

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