BEIJING/SEOUL, July 10 (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping urged China and North Korea to maintain “strategic resolve” amid a turbulent global environment and speed up implementation of agreements he reached with Kim Jong Un last month, Chinese state media reported.
Xi made the remarks at a meeting with North Korea’s Premier Pak Thae Song, who arrived in Beijing earlier on Friday for a three-day visit to attend an event marking the 65th anniversary of the neighbours’ friendship treaty.
Xi travelled to Pyongyang for his first visit to North Korea in seven years last month, where he and Kim agreed to expand cooperation across politics, economy and culture.
“At present, the international situation is intertwined with changes and turmoil. China and North Korea should maintain strategic resolve and enhance strategic confidence,” state broadcaster CCTV cited Xi as saying.
He called for faster implementation of the consensus he had reached with Kim, saying the two sides should ensure their relations “keep pace with the time,” CCTV reported.
The two countries should firmly safeguard their respective sovereignty, security and development interests, Xi told Pak.
WARMING TIES
Signed on July 11, 1961, the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance remains China’s only active mutual defence pact.
Beijing has worked to draw Pyongyang back into its fold after the COVID-19 pandemic froze exchanges and Kim deepened ties with Moscow by sending troops and weapons to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Relations between China and North Korea have warmed markedly since late 2025, with the two sides stepping up diplomatic engagement and resuming passenger train services and direct flights between their capitals.
But analysts said there were still limits to how far North Korea was willing to go to improve its ties with China, after moving closer to Russia and receiving economic help in return.
Pak, 70, became North Korea’s premier in December 2024, rising to the head of cabinet after a long career in the ruling Workers’ Party, initially specializing in propaganda and party disciplinary functions, then working in various posts on industrial, science and education policies.
A longstanding member of Kim’s inner circle, Pak has worked closely with the North Korean leader since the early years of his rule after Kim took power in 2011, and likely before that when he was being groomed as successor.
Pak was briefly sidelined in the early 2020s for reasons not officially explained, when North Korea imposed some of the world’s strictest COVID-19 lockdown measures.
Pak is known to have travelled abroad only on a few occasions, mostly in 2018 and 2019, to China and Russia. In October 2019, he visited Moscow as head of the Supreme People’s Assembly.
(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom and Jack Kim in Seoul; Editing by Ros Russell and Sharon Singleton)
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