China backs North Korean call to revise sanctions to revive nuclear talks
- Instead of empty slogans, US should restart UN resolutions and ‘revise sanctions related to humanitarian aspects’, Beijing says
- Denuclearisation talks stalled in 2019 and Pyongyang has resumed its missile tests
Although the Chinese foreign ministry has continued to urge restraint from all parties in response to Pyongyang, spokeswoman Hua Chunying also called for North Korea’s “justified and reasonable concerns” to be taken seriously and addressed.
02:10
North Korea’s Kim Jong-un offers to reconnect vital communication line with South Korea
South Korea and the US have long pressed China to play a more influential role in securing North Korea’s denuclearisation. Pyongyang’s main ally, it effectively remained North Korea’s only lifeline during the pandemic, and both nations have had tense relations with Washington.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un this week sent a personal message to Chinese President Xi Jinping, urging the ruling Communist Party to “crush the insane anti-China forces” as the country marked National Day.
“The party, the government and the people of North Korea will firmly support their Chinese counterparts in crushing the insane anti-China forces, defending the country’s sovereignty, development and territorial rights,” Kim said in his letter, published on Friday.
Kim said the people of North Korea were as happy for the success of Communist Party-led China “as if it’s our own”, and suggested more strategic cooperation between the neighbours to display a “comradeship unity”.
There have been signs of Beijing and Pyongyang moving closer under growing pressure from the US. The latest annual threat assessment of the American intelligence community listed China and North Korea, alongside Russia and Iran, as the US’ main national security challenges, which “demonstrated the capability and intent to advance their interests at the expense of the United States and its allies, despite the pandemic”.
01:17
North Korea tells UN it has the ‘right’ to test weapons
Beijing has watched inter-Korean relations carefully, while South Korean President Moon Jae-in has reiterated his calls for a formal declaration of the end of the Korean war. Fighting ended in 1953 with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Liu Xiaoming, Beijing’s special representative on Korean peninsula affairs, held video talks with South Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator, Noh Kyu-duk, a day after North Korea’s latest missile test this week, and said China had shared interests with Seoul on the peninsula and would support improved relations between North and South Korea.
Although he rejected Moon’s proposal, saying the US and Seoul had to change their “hostile” policies, Kim held out an olive branch by saying he was willing to reopen the severed inter-Korean hotlines in October, according to the North’s state media on Thursday.
Nuclear talks between North Korea and the US collapsed in 2019 when then American president Donald Trump declined Kim’s demands for sanctions relief in exchange for the partial dismantling of his country’s nuclear programme.
