Thinking China could be left out of talks with North Korea was nothing more than a pipe dream.
The abrupt and secretive summit between Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un caught the world by surprise, but it shouldn’t have. China is still North Korea’s biggest, most important ally. It would be naïve to expect Kim to meet with Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump without first consulting Xi.
Those of us who were taken aback by news of the Xi-Kim summit had been deluding ourselves when we thought that China would not have a major role in the process. Moon’s proposal of a trilateral summit between the two Koreas and the United States, undermining China’s influence, turned out to be nothing more than a pipe dream.
For the two communist allies, though, the timing for this long overdue summit could not have been better. Aside from the maximized propaganda benefits for both countries, it was an opportunity for Xi to make China’s voice heard and to demonstrate its influence in the peace process, and a chance for Kim to ensure Chinese support while entering into talks with sworn enemies.
In early September 2017, after North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test, the authors predicted in a number of interviews with the South Korean media that the North would soon shift its strategy from aggression to dialogue. We speculated that in six to 12 months North Korea would have gained sufficient confidence thanks to its nuclear and missile developments and would want to use its new status to negotiate with the stakeholders in the region.
