Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang (李克強), the man likely to succeed Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), will focus on strengthening economic and political bonds with North Korea during a visit that began yesterday, China’s ambassador said.
Li began his three-day visit to North Korea accompanied by senior diplomats and economic officials, including China Development Bank chairman Chen Yuan (陳元), Xinhua news agency reported.
While other governments have focused on pressing Pyongyang to resume nuclear disarmament, Chinese Ambassador Liu Hongcai (劉洪才) said Li’s visit was about boosting ties.
“I’m confident that this visit will enhance political trust between China and North Korea and deepen practical trade and economic cooperation,” Liu said, according to an interview issued on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Web site. “There is a bright outlook for friendly cooperation between the two countries.”
Li, 56, is the favorite to become premier from early 2013, when Wen will step down.
Li will visit the North for three days and then South Korea from Wednesday for two days. His trip to Pyongyang underscores Beijing’s support for its poor neighbor, ruled by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who relies on China for economic and diplomatic support.
Pyongyang has stirred regional tensions with its nuclear arms ambitions, missile tests and deadly confrontations across the divided peninsula last year.
Beijing has stood by the North, which it sees as a brittle but vital bulwark against the US and its allies. However, China has also sought to build ties with South Korea, a much more important trade partner, and to revive six-party talks on North Korean nuclear disarmament.
North Korea walked out of the talks more than two years ago after the UN imposed fresh sanctions on it for holding nuclear and missile tests.
The published comments from Liu did not mention the nuclear disarmament talks.
Liu said that Li’s visit would “make a positive contribution to protecting and promoting regional peace and stability.”
Today, North Korea and the US open two days of talks in Geneva, but US officials have said North Korea must make real steps to healing ties with South Korea and to reviving nuclear disarmament before six-party talks can resume.
Those intermittent talks bring together China, Japan, Russia, both Koreas and the US, and produced an agreement in September 2005 under which North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives to be provided by other parties.
North Korea faces chronic harvest shortfalls that have left a third of its children under five malnourished, the top UN humanitarian -official said on Friday after visiting.
China has sought to draw the North closer with economic incentives, and Liu said bilateral trade between the two countries grew to US$3.1 billion in the first seven months of this year, an 87 percent increase from the same period last year.
Chinese customs statistics show that growth was propelled by a 169.2 percent jump in the value of Chinese imports from the North.
“North Korea is paying more attention to economic development and improving people’s livelihoods,” said Liu, who added that this was encouraging more Chinese investment there.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing