Xi draws a line on North Korea’s alliance demands
The Pyongyang visit had one purpose: limiting China’s exposure as North Korean troops fight in Europe.
Lost among the flag-waving children and red-carpet welcome for Xi Jinping in Pyongyang last week was the true intention of the visit – China’s wish to absolve itself of any responsibility for North Korea’s military presence in Europe.
China and North Korea are treaty allies, and while Beijing is a “forever” partner of Moscow, it has no desire to become entrapped in great-power competition with the United States in both the European and Asian theatres.
A long history informs this view. China was initially worried in 1961 about signing an alliance with North Korea, fearing it would become tangled in a war started by Pyongyang. Beijing’s original position was that it would only sign such a treaty after Korean unification. But after the Sino–Soviet Split and a 1961 Soviet Union–North Korea Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance, China reversed its original position.
To win favour with Pyongyang, the text of the China–North Korea treaty is vague when it comes to defining the condition of China’s military assistance, as Beijing did not specify whether it would aid North Korea if Pyongyang attacked another party first. This left the door open for Chinese intervention on North Korea’s side were Pyongyang to resume the Korean War. China only clarified the condition in 2017 – at the height of the US-North Korea “fire and fury” nuclear standoff – that it would rescue North Korea only if it was attacked first.
China assures North Korea it still has Pyongyang’s back in Asia – which frees it to keep dispatching troops to Russia.
The treaty also defines a geographical scope for China’s commitment – and this is what now worries Xi. Article I says that China and North Korea entered the treaty to “safeguard the peace of Asia and the world and the security of all peoples”, while Article VI affirms both parties’ “aim of preserving peace in the Far East”.
North Korean participation in the Russia–Ukraine war complicates this commitment. North Korea did not start the war, nor has it directly violated Ukrainian sovereignty. But Ukrainian armed forces killing North Korean troops in Kursk could theoretically activate a call for Chinese military assistance, given the geographical scope of the treaty remains vague – is it the world or just the Far East?
North Korea had earlier sent troops to the Vietnam War, but the geographical scope of China’s commitment was not a problem then given that Beijing also sent forces to help Hanoi fight the United States and South Vietnam.
Xi’s visit serves to clarify this geographical scope. In the Chinese state readout , Asia is emphasised as the focus of China–North Korea cooperation. Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency and Rodong Sinmun omit any mention of “Asia”. Such an omission is intentional, because Pyongyang wants to link the European and the Asian theatres to justify its decision to send troops to Russia as a defence of North Korea itself. North Korea’s omission of “Asia” is consistent with its decision not to acknowledge China’s 2017 clarification on the condition of military support when both sides renewed the treaty in 2021. North Korea does not want any limits on Chinese military assistance, whether on sequencing or geography.
A photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik showing Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang in 2024 (Getty Images)
About the author
Khang Vu
Khang Vu is a visiting scholar in the Political Science Department at Boston College.