Xi Sees Kim’s Warheads as Leverage Over U.S. Allies
Executive Summary:
- Xi Jinping’s June 8 visit to Pyongyang left denuclearization unmentioned, suggesting that Beijing no longer asks Pyongyang to surrender its weapons. This follows a trend over the last year in which Beijing has stopped discussing nuclear issues on the Korean peninsula in public statements.
- Official discourse now frames nuclear issues in northeast Asia exclusively in terms of the prospect of U.S. allies acquiring nuclear weapons, in particular denouncing Japan’s supposed “new militarism” while ignoring the threats it now faces from three hostile nuclear neighbors.
- Beijing hopes that a nuclear Pyongyang will strain U.S. alliances in the region: either Washington must extend costly assurances, or it acquiesces to nuclear proliferation and can be painted as a destabilizing and irresponsible power.
On June 8, President Xi Jinping arrived in Pyongyang for a two-day state visit, his first trip abroad in 2026 and his first return to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) since 2019. The two sides agreed to expand cooperation across trade, agriculture, infrastructure, science, public health, law enforcement, and the military (Ministry of Foreign Affairs [MFA], June 8). Denuclearization went unmentioned.
Two days earlier, in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo Jong, a department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and Kim Jong Un’s sister, called the DPRK’s nuclear status “the line of no retreat,” dismissed the U.S. push for denuclearization as an “anachronistic dream,” and rejected the U.S. claim that the May Trump–Xi summit had reaffirmed a shared denuclearization goal, adding that Pyongyang had received a direct explanation from Beijing of what the two leaders discussed (KCNA, June 7). [1] Asked at the June 8 briefing whether the talks had addressed the nuclear program and whether Beijing still sought denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) spokesman Lin Jian (林剑) said only that Beijing’s position maintains “continuity and stability” (连续性、稳定性) (MFA, June 8).
Tolerance of a nuclear DPRK among leadership in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has solidified over the past year. Meeting readouts at the leader-, premier-, and minister-level all have omitted calls for denuclearization. In October 2025, PRC premier Li Qiang (李强) implicitly signaled his support for the DPRK’s nuclear program when he attended the 80th anniversary celebrations of the Workers’ Party of Korea parade and watched nuclear missiles displayed in Kim Il Sung Square (China Brief, November 25, 2025). This was effectively confirmed when the Workers’ Party of Korea codified the DPRK as a permanent nuclear weapons state in February 2026, something that would not have occurred without the tacit approval of the PRC and Russia (China Brief, April 8). Beijing’s apparent exemption from nonproliferation for Pyongyang stands in contrast to its accusations that other regional states are seeking to acquire nuclear warheads (MFA, June 18). It also suggests that the PRC now sees Pyongyang’s nuclearization as a wedge to be used against Washington and its allies.
Beijing Has Gradually Dropped Discussion of Denuclearization
The PRC’s gradual retreat from denuclearization can be traced across official statements. Enforcement went first. In May 2022, Beijing and Moscow vetoed a United Nations (UN) resolution to add sanctions on Pyongyang, the first such veto since the Council began sanctioning the DPRK in 2006, even as Beijing still recited the denuclearization line (PRC Mission to the UN, May 27, 2022). Condemnation disappeared next. When Pyongyang passed a law in September 2022 declaring its nuclear status irreversible, the Foreign Ministry, asked to comment given Beijing’s long-standing denuclearization stance, said only that the PRC position “has not changed” (没有变化) (MFA, September 9, 2022). When the DPRK wrote nuclear status into its constitution in September 2023, Beijing again declined to object (Reuters, September 28, 2023; MFA, October 30, 2023).
The clearest signal came in Xi Jinping’s October 2025 message marking the Workers’ Party’s 80th anniversary, in which he hailed the “victorious convening” (胜利召开) of its Ninth Congress but made no mention of the nuclear issue (Xinhua, October 10, 2025). That congress codified the country’s permanent nuclear-weapons status and a “two hostile states” doctrine toward South Korea in its constitution, and signaled a buildup of both nuclear and conventional forces. Xi sent Kim a personal message following the event, congratulating him on his re-election as the party’s general secretary but again making no reference to the nuclear issue (MFA, February 23; China Brief, April 8).
The PRC has sought to avoid the word “nuclear” altogether in relation to the DPRK. In January 2025, when asked about the incoming U.S. defense secretary calling the DPRK a “nuclear power,” the MFA opted instead to discuss peace and stability and the importance of a political resolution on the Korean peninsula (MFA, January 16, 2025). By the time Kim publicly ruled out disarmament in September 2025, Beijing no longer invoked denuclearization at all, urging instead that the international community address the “crux and root causes” (症结和根源) of issues on the peninsula (MFA, September 22, 2025). This has continued in the most recent press conference readout, which pledged unwavering support for Kim’s leadership and called on the two sides to “firmly defend their respective sovereignty, security, and development interests” (坚定捍卫各自主权、安全、发展利益), with no reference to the nuclear issue (MFA, June 8).
Beijing Sees Advantages in a Nuclear Pyongyang
In place of denuclearization, Beijing’s recent statements voice a set of grievances aimed at the United States. Invocation of the “crux and root causes” of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula, calls for “relevant parties” to “stop threats and pressure” (停止威胁施压), and demands for respecting each country’s “legitimate security concerns” (合理安全关切) are paired with criticisms of the West’s “Cold War mentality” (冷战思维) and “double standards” (双重标准) (MFA, April 20). The United States is the clear target of these phrases—some of them, such as “legitimate security concerns” and “root causes,” are also deployed to defend Russia and Iran while condemning U.S. and Israeli strikes as illegal (MFA, March 3).
The MFA’s latest report on the implementation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is perhaps the clearest illustration of Beijing’s double standards on nuclear security issues in northeast Asia. It makes no call for the DPRK to disarm, nor does it mention the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program; yet it condemns officials at the Japanese prime minister’s office who declared that Japan should possess nuclear weapons, calling the statement “a blatant provocation to the post-war international order and the nuclear nonproliferation regime” (对二战后国际秩序和核不扩散体系的公然挑衅). It also repeats the claim that Japan since 2023 has irresponsibly released unsafe wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean (MFA, April 20).
Two developments in May, neither of which directly concerned Korea, help explain the shift in Beijing’s behavior. The first was the Beijing summit at which Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to frame relations as “a constructive China–U.S. relationship of strategic stability,” which Beijing timestamped as guidance for the next three years and beyond (Xinhua, May 14). For Beijing, this understanding entails a modus vivendi of mutual non-interference within respective spheres of influence. This extends to matters concerning the DPRK’s nuclear program (China Brief, June 5). The PRC has long treated its influence over the DPRK as a point of leverage in its nuclear diplomacy with the United States, partly to constrain the U.S. troop presence, missile defenses, and exercises in South Korea that the North Korean threat was used to justify. This new framing represents a slight departure from that position by attempting to take the issue off the table altogether. At the same time, Beijing is now seeking to deflect from the DPRK to focus attention on its primary regional rival: Japan.
Xi’s comments about Japan at the summit with Trump constitute the second development. Reporting describes an “intense diatribe” from Xi on Japan’s “new militarism” (新型军国主义) and rising defense spending as his most agitated moment across the two days of meetings. Trump pushed back, arguing that Japan needed a more assertive posture precisely because of the growing North Korean nuclear and missile threat (China Brief, April 28; Financial Times, May 24). Without acknowledging that Japan’s desire for stronger defense capabilities is a result of the DPRK’s nuclearization, the PRC’s own dramatic warhead buildup, and Russia’s renewed military convergence with the PRC, Beijing instead redirects criticism to Tokyo, and seeks to persuade Washington as its key ally to pressure Tokyo not to pursue its current defense agenda. [2]
For Washington and its allies, the practical effect is that the denuclearization framework now survives mainly in their own statements. The goal of complete and verifiable disarmament, still affirmed by the allies and pressed by Seoul, no longer has the backing of the government(s) with the most leverage over Pyongyang. At a mid-June G7 summit in France, member countries reaffirmed their commitment to the DPRK’s “complete denuclearization”, but Kim Yo Jong dismissed this a day later as an infringement of sovereignty, and the PRC is yet to comment (Élysée, June 17; Yonhap, June 18). The UN Security Council sanctions regime, meanwhile, has failed. Beijing and Moscow vetoed new sanctions together in 2022; and in March 2024, Russia vetoed the renewal of the UN Panel of Experts that had monitored enforcement for 14 years, with Beijing abstaining. This has resulted in a lapse in independent UN monitoring, though the sanctions nominally remain (PBS, March 28, 2024). Seoul has felt the change most directly. President Lee Jae Myung’s request at a January 2026 summit that Xi intervene with Pyongyang went unanswered, yielding only an affirmation of resuming dialogue (MFA, January 5). Beijing maintained that silence even when Seoul raised the denuclearization issue directly at a June 17 director-general meeting (Yonhap, June 18; MFA, June 18).
The prospect for further proliferation is, as a result, more likely now than it has been in decades. This poses a dilemma for the United States, as it is U.S. allies who are more likely to seek a nuclear deterrent. Surveys in South Korea have for years shown majority support for an independent nuclear option, and Washington and Seoul are already weighing a redistribution that would put primary responsibility for deterring the DPRK on South Korea so that U.S. forces can concentrate on the PRC (Asan Institute, April 28, 2025). Beijing’s ongoing messaging campaign against Japan is an early indicator of its approach if proliferation were to occur. It will condemn any U.S. ally that pursues nuclearization, while painting the United States as a reckless and dangerous power actively destabilizing the international order. Reassuring allies will require the United States to devote resources to strengthening its commitments to extended deterrence, which could raise the cost to the United States itself and friction within its alliances.
Conclusion
Beijing’s official discourse is attempting to deflect from its failure to pursue nuclear nonproliferation in the DPRK and instead putting the burden on Washington. By ceasing to broach the topic of nuclearization in government statements and high-level speeches, and framing its relations with the United States in ways that deter discussion of peninsular issues, it has sought to paint the DPRK as a victim of the West, deploying the same constructions it uses to voice support for Ukraine and Iran.
The PRC’s omission of public support for denuclearization, coupled with its vetoes and abstentions at the UN Security Council, is also hollowing out the international sanctions regime. Its implicit acceptance of Pyongyang’s arsenal as established fact, meanwhile, allows it to refocus nonproliferation discussions onto those countries that now might wish to acquire nuclear weapons—regional U.S. allies. Its persistent condemnation of Japan throughout the first half of 2026 is an indicator of its approach. This is already creating complications for the United States, as demonstrated at the G7 summit. President Lee Jae Myung pitched Trump on a phased formula of freezing, then reducing, then eliminating the DPRK’s arsenal, to which Trump promised only that he would consider it (Yonhap, June 19). By closing the chapter on the DPRK’s denuclearization, Beijing may have succeeded in creating some hard problems for the United States; but it has also ensured that the world will continue down the path to becoming a more dangerous place.
Notes
[1] Pyongyang has rejected denuclearization since the 2019 Hanoi talks collapsed, though Seoul and other Western governments continue to press for the removal of all nuclear weapons from the peninsula.
[2] The visit also checked Moscow, whose deepening ties with Pyongyang had begun to crowd out PRC influence. Making the DPRK Xi’s first trip of the year asserted primacy as much as it spoke to the bomb.
