When North Korean leader Kim Jong-un arrived by armored train in Beijing for a military parade in September last year, the pageantry signaled a thaw in one of the world’s most important relationships after several years of frosty ties.
Behind the spectacle of tanks and fighter jets, Kim brought a senior economic team to talk trade and investment. Five weeks later, Chinese Premier Li Qiang (李強) reciprocated in Pyongyang, and China’s ambassador declared that the countries were “writing a new chapter.”
For China, the mission is clear: reassert its traditional influence over a neighbor that has drawn closer to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. North Korea has supplied troops and weapons to Moscow in exchange for fuel and food to shore up an economy hobbled by UN sanctions over its nuclear weapons program.
Illustration: Mountain People
An examination revealed how Beijing is deepening engagement with Pyongyang as US President Donald Trump prepares to visit China and expresses interest in reviving talks with Kim for the first time since 2019.
Satellite imagery shows China and North Korea are installing new infrastructure along the border — including roadworks and port facilities, some not previously reported — and forging closer economic links that boost Beijing’s sway over any US overtures to Pyongyang.
To document the shift, trade data were reviewed and about three dozen people were interviewed, including North Korean waitresses, Chinese business owners with factories in North Korea, Western tour operators and a Chinese government official. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
The rapprochement is cautious: North Korea shut its borders in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and remains largely closed to tourism, even as passenger train services to the country from China resume this week.
And Kim’s pivot to Moscow in recent years has diversified his political and economic partners amid continued sanctions pressure. Still, his intensifying cooperation with China positions North Korea for a wider reopening that some analysts said would enable Beijing to reinforce its smaller neighbor’s economic dependence and signal to Trump that his top strategic rival holds the key to shaping Kim’s actions.
China’s exports to North Korea reached a six-year high of US$2.3 billion last year, a 25 percent annual increase. In November last year, China dropped its longstanding call for North Korea’s denuclearization from an official arms control white paper.
Kim in a message on Monday to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) said cooperation between the two countries “will become even closer in the future as we advance the common cause of socialism,” North Korean state media reported.
“Discussions across all areas — politics, economy, security and military — have kicked off, laying ground for relations to take a leap,” Kyungnam University research director Lim Eul-chul said.
Asked about China’s courting of North Korea, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia welcomes greater cooperation in the region, which contributes to stability and security.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said China and North Korea have been “actively advancing border cooperation” to foster exchanges, without addressing Pyongyang’s ties with Moscow.
North Korea’s mission to the UN and its embassy in Beijing did not respond to questions.
In the frontier city of Dandong, China has shown its readiness for a surge in cross-border traffic. In May, road markings reading “truck entry lane” and “passenger vehicle entry lane” were painted onto the Chinese side of the unopened New Yalu River Bridge, which spans the border with North Korea, satellite images show. A new sports court has been installed at Dandong New Zone’s dormant customs facility.
Recent construction is evident at other Chinese border stations, including roadworks, new facilities at the northernmost Quanhe port and new pavement and buildings at Nanping and Sanhe. Analysis of satellite imagery provided by Planet Labs was corroborated by Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) analysts Joseph Bermudez Jr and Jennifer Jun.
North Korea has also been building what CSIS experts say is a customs and immigration facility, as well as warehouse and cargo transfer buildings, on its side of the unopened bridge. After a 15-year delay, North Korea spent most of last year working on the project before construction stalled in November. It could not be determined why the work was paused. The infrastructure work is now being matched by operational steps. China announced this week that passenger train services between Beijing, Dandong and Pyongyang would resume on Thursday for the first time in six years. Tickets are limited to travelers with a North Korean business visa, a sales office representative in Beijing said.
While tourism to North Korea has not officially resumed — Pyongyang canceled an international marathon scheduled for April — the revival of the rail connection is a positive sign for the eventual return of tourists, cofounder of travel operator Young Pioneer Tours Rowan Beard said. Chinese travelers accounted for the bulk of tourists to North Korea before the border closure.
In Dandong in January, peddlers on the riverfront promenade were selling lapel pins emblazoned with Kim’s portrait, while touts offered boat trips to visitors. A steady stream of Chinese trucks carried goods such as cloth, soybean oil, tires and frozen duck meat across the old Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge toward North Korean guards.
At the Songtaoyuan restaurant on a freezing evening, five North Korean waitresses moved between tables, serving cold noodles. One said she was among a group of more than 10 workers who arrived from North Korea in December last year.
China’s foreign affairs and commerce ministries did not address questions about the North Korean workers and Beijing’s enforcement of UN sanctions, which prohibit member states from issuing new work permits to North Koreans. Songtaoyuan did not respond to a request for comment.
The pickup in activity shows China is preparing to expand trade, Bermudez said.
“North Korea has a lot of raw material and also lots of people who could be put to work at a very, very low wage rate,” he said.
While UN sanctions restrict traditional North Korean exports such as coal, Beijing has pivoted to importing labor-intensive materials that help prop up the Kim dynasty. Hair products — wigs, eyelashes and false beards — now account for nearly half of China’s imports from North Korea, rising 327-fold over the past decade.
China is also the main buyer of strategic metals from North Korea. Shipments of molybdenum ores and tungsten ores — essential for rockets and missile components — reached records of US$17.2 million and US$31.5 million respectively last year, customs data show. These official imports allow China to bolster its stockpile at low prices while ensuring that North Korean minerals do not reach the global market to undermine Chinese export controls, Trivium China critical-minerals analyst Cory Combs said.
Political momentum is gaining, too. North Korea in October last year explicitly endorsed Beijing’s position on Taiwan, shortly before China’s arms white paper dropped calls for “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. At a party congress last month, Kim vowed to expand his nuclear arsenal and said prospects for better relations with the US rested entirely on Washington’s attitude. Trump, who plans to visit China later this month, has said he would love to meet the North Korean leader again. Kim has said the US must first drop its demands for Pyongyang to relinquish its nuclear weapons.
A US Department of State spokesperson said the US remains committed to the complete denuclearization of North Korea.
Despite increased engagement between Beijing and Pyongyang, a transformation remains elusive in Dandong, where hopes of renewed trade with North Korea have fueled boom-and-bust cycles for years.
No traffic crosses the New Yalu River Bridge, completed by China in 2014. On the Chinese side, residents curious about any signs of progress use binoculars to peer over the crossing, which ends abruptly in a field. North Korea’s new entry port, conceived in 2010, sits abandoned, with no workers in sight.
“We once joked that Dandong New Zone would be the second Shanghai,” a waiter at a cafe by the unused bridge said. “If the other side really opened up, it would be.”
Instead, empty storefronts line the streets. Property prices have slumped to about 3,000 yuan (US$435) per square meter, down from 10,000 yuan during Trump’s first term, according to residents and a review of property records and local media reports.
Four traders in China said logistics with North Korea remain restrictive.
“Before the pandemic, our trucks could freely enter North Korea’s interior to deliver or pick up goods,” said an owner of an eyelash manufacturer with a factory in North Korea. “Now, they can only receive and drop off goods at the North Korean customs.”
North Korea’s caution about reopening stems partly from frustration that China has not done more to relax compliance with UN sanctions, Lim said.
Some Dandong residents said North Korea’s port-of-entry needs to be completed for the promised “new chapter” to materialize.
A Chinese government official named Qi, who monitors border trade, said any improvement would be gradual, but he remains hopeful.
“The worst time has passed,” Qi said. “It can only get better and better.”
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
Before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can blockade, invade, and destroy the democracy on Taiwan, the CCP seeks to make the world an accomplice to Taiwan’s subjugation by harassing any government that confers any degree of marginal recognition, or defies the CCP’s “One China Principle” diktat that there is no free nation of Taiwan. For United States President Donald Trump’s upcoming May 14, 2026 visit to China, the CCP’s top wish has nothing to do with Trump’s ongoing dismantling of the CCP’s Axis of Evil. The CCP’s first demand is for Trump to cease US
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly widespread in workplaces, some people stand to benefit from the technology while others face lower wages and fewer job opportunities. However, from a longer-term perspective, as AI is applied more extensively to business operations, the personnel issue is not just about changes in job opportunities, but also about a structural mismatch between skills and demand. This is precisely the most pressing issue in the current labor market. Tai Wei-chun (戴偉峻), director-general of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence Innovation at the Institute for Information Industry, said in a recent interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times
RSS