Kim trip complicates matters for Trump
BEIJING >> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is in China. Again.
Kim arrived on Tuesday for his third visit to China in the span of three months, meeting with President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in the heart of Beijing.
The visit comes a week after President Donald Trump met with Kim in Singapore and a day after the United States confirmed it will cancel what Trump called “war games” with South Korea scheduled for August. News of Kim’s trip came just hours after Trump threatened China with tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods.
On Tuesday evening, Kim and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, were welcomed by Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan.
Xi reportedly praised the outcome of the Singapore summit, calling it an “important step toward the political solution of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue,” according to the party-controlled press.
Although details are scarce, the timing and staging of Kim’s trip sends a clear message about Beijing’s place at the center of East Asian diplomacy — and its power over North Korea.
With U.S.-China trade ties on the rocks, Kim is well positioned to play both powers, talking sweet to Trump while pursuing a closer relationship with Xi.
“Although it seems there is a booming romance between Kim Jong Un and Trump, Kim understands the hierarchy. He knows that Xi is the Asian Godfather,” said Yanmei Xie, a China policy analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, an economic research firm in Beijing.
“He is making a pragmatic calculation that China can provide economic assistance to integrate North Korea diplomatically and economically into Northeast Asia.”
Kim’s visit to China this week will renew questions about what happens postSingapore. Although Trump has taken great pains to cast last week’s summit as an unqualified success, the next steps are not clear.
With North Korea’s nuclear testing halted, for now, and August’s war games off, China may be willing to cut North Korea some slack.
In Beijing, Kim is likely to ask Xi to ease up on economic sanctions — something the United States strongly opposes.
Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in Beijing at a news conference with Foreign Minister Wang Yi that China “acknowledged that the sanctions regime that is in place today will remain in place until such time as that denuclearization is in fact complete.”