Chinese and North Korean state-run media this week devoted thousands of words to Xi Jinping's summit with Kim Jong Un, but made no mention of a key matter for Washington: the North's steadfast pursuit of nuclear weapons that could threaten the United States and its allies in Asia. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.
The silence says more than reams of the carefully framed propaganda.
Until disarmament talks finally fell apart in 2019, Washington and Beijing were yearslong partners in diplomacy seeking to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions in return for much-needed aid and political recognition.
Beijing routinely called for "denuclearization" — a bureaucratic term for nuclear disarmament — and there was hope in Washington, as well as in Seoul and Tokyo, that China would use its perceived influence as Pyongyang's diplomatic and economic protector to push the North on the nuclear standoff.
Xi's visit to Pyongyang on Monday and Tuesday — his first visit there in seven years — could spell the end of that hope — and signal a significant shift in how he views the North's nuclear weapons.
From Beijing's perspective, Xi's silence may be an acknowledgment of how far North Korea's nuclear program has come since Kim Jong Un took power in 2011.