North Korea needs China for survival: Why does Beijing need Pyongyang?

China’s President Xi Jinping has arrived in Pyongyang on his first overseas trip this year as he aims to boost ties with North Korea, a reclusive nuclear-armed nation opposed to US military expansion in the Asia Pacific region.

During Xi’s two-day visit, “both sides will use the visit as an opportunity to promote greater development of China-North Korea relations in keeping with the times”, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning told a press briefing on Friday.

The visit, Xi’s first in seven years, also comes at a time when North Korea has strengthened relations with Russia, its northern neighbour.

North Korea’s ties to China go back to the Korean War more than 70 years ago. North and South Korea are technically still at war, as the conflict ended in an armistice in 1953. More than 28,000 US soldiers are still deployed in South Korea.

So, what do China and North Korea’s relations look like? And why has China, the world’s second-largest economy, cultivated close ties with an isolated country like North Korea?

The two countries’ relations began after World War II, when China helped North Korea fend off South Korean forces backed by US and UN forces in the early 1950s. Between 200,000 and 400,000 Chinese soldiers were killed. In 1961, Beijing and Pyongyang signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance under which China is obliged to intervene militarily if North Korea is attacked.

Despite close Beijing-Pyongyang ties, China improved economic relations with South Korea in the 1980s, according to a 2024 report by the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank.

Moreover, China also repeatedly opposed North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, straining relations.