China’s Prime Minister Li Qiang will travel to North Korea this week to attend celebrations held for North Korea’s ruling party’s 80th anniversary this Friday. The high-level visit will last from October 9 to 11. The anniversary will include a massive military parade in Pyongyang, demonstrating North Korea’s military might. The Russian former president Dmitri Medvedev is expected to attend the celebrations on behalf of Russia.
Li Qiang’s visit represents the highest-level Chinese trip to North Korea since 2019. However, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attended a Beijing military parade recently this September alongside Russian president Vladimir Putin. Since taking office in 2011, this was the first time Kim participated in an event with such a large gathering of world leaders and politicians.
During this summit, China and North Korea pledged to deepen bilateral cooperation. China for years have been North Korea’s biggest trading partner and continues to be. North Korea, for its part, expressed its willingness to strengthen ties with China and “in multilateral affairs, jointly resist unilateralism and power politics and promote a fairer and more just world order”. The emphasis on unilateralism here probably stems from heavy U.S sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear program and the recent imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods.
Amid these developments and statements, U.S. President Donald Trump posted on social media, addressing China’s president directly, advising him with irony to give his warmest regards to Russian and North Korean leaders “as you conspire against The United States of America”. The upcoming gathering of Russian, North Korean, and Chinese leaders in North Korea will likely spark renewed tension and speculation about their joint cooperation against the U.S. However, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in a letter congratulating Putin on his birthday, framed the alliance among Pyongyang, Moscow, and Beijing as a step forward toward a “just and multi-polarised world order”.
