To Xi Jinping, on His New Best Friend in Pyongyang

Introduction: a letter no one in Beijing will read

Mr. President Xi

I know you will never read this letter. But I am writing it anyway, because what has been unfolding between Beijing and Pyongyang over the past few weeks deserves to be named clearly. On July 1, 2026, your North Korean ally Kim Jong Un sent a congratulatory message for the 105th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, praising an "unshakeable will" to develop ties between your two countries.

This is no calendar coincidence. It's the logical continuation of a rapprochement that began in early June, when you set foot on North Korean soil for the first time in nearly seven years, according to the South Korean agency Yonhap. And it is precisely this rapprochement that this letter aims to dissect.

Why I'm writing to you rather than to Kim

Because in this duo, you're the one holding the purse strings. China accounted for nearly 98% of North Korea's foreign trade in 2024, according to South Korea's Ministry of Economy and Finance. Kim Jong Un can talk all he wants about "fraternal ties" and "historic socialist roots," but the reality is more prosaic: without Beijing, the North Korean economy collapses within months.

I don't claim to know your exact intentions, Mr. Xi, and I'm wary of anyone who claims to read the mind of a leader as opaque as you. But I can read facts, dates, numbers. And those facts sketch an authoritarian axis that is thickening before our eyes, while the West looks the other way.

Timeline of a calculated rapprochement

The Pyongyang summit, June 8 and 9

Let's go back to the facts. On June 8 and 9, 2026, you traveled to Pyongyang to meet Kim Jong Un. Chinese state media reported that you had pushed for closer diplomatic, police, and military cooperation with North Korea. The two leaders adopted what North Korean state media called a "grand blueprint" to strengthen what they describe as "the most powerful and strategic relations."

This visit was not a mere protocol exercise. It was your first visit to North Korea in nearly seven years, a highly symbolic gesture amid regional tension, as Taiwan reports a rise in Chinese military incursions around its territory.

The July 1 message

Three weeks later, Kim Jong Un's message, reported by the official agency KCNA, confirmed that this rapprochement was no diplomatic flash in the pan. "It is the firm position of our Party and our government to steadily develop the friendly relations between the DPRK and China, which have long and historic roots, with socialism at their core," he wrote, according to the translation relayed by AFP.

He also called the Pyongyang summit a "historic occasion" that deepened "friendship and trust between comrades," and stated that the two leaders had reaffirmed their "unshakeable will" to advance bilateral relations.

A timeline this tight, a summit in June, a message in July, is never accidental in a diplomacy as tightly controlled as yours, Mr. Xi. Every date is chosen, every word is weighed.

Why this rapprochement worries Washington and its allies

Containing Moscow by courting Pyongyang

Here is what I genuinely believe, Mr. Xi: this charm offensive toward Kim Jong Un has nothing to do with sudden fraternal affection. It's about containing Russia's growing influence over North Korea. Ever since Pyongyang signed a strategic defense agreement with Moscow and sent thousands of North Korean soldiers to fight in the war in Ukraine, your position as the dominant economic partner may no longer be enough to guarantee your exclusive influence over the North Korean regime.

This quiet rivalry between two authoritarian regimes competing for the favor of a third reveals a dynamic the West can no longer ignore: the China-Russia-North Korea-Iran axis is not a unified, monolithic bloc, but a constellation of overlapping rivalries and interests, sometimes opportunistic ones.

A signal sent to Seoul and Washington

This Sino-North Korean rapprochement is unfolding in a regional context where Taiwan is observing a resurgence of Chinese military incursions, according to recent reports. It's a stark reminder that Chinese strategy isn't confined to a single front: it advances simultaneously on several boards, from the Taiwan Strait to the Korean Peninsula.

I'll say it plainly, Mr. Xi: every gesture you make toward Pyongyang must be read in light of your posture toward Taiwan and your indirect support for Russia's war in Ukraine. There is no isolated Chinese diplomacy. There is a global strategy, and it aims to weaken the international order the West has built since 1945.

North Korean economic dependence as leverage

A number that says it all: 98%

The figure bears repeating: nearly 98% of North Korea's foreign trade runs through China, according to data from South Korea's Ministry of Economy and Finance for 2024. This level of dependence has no equivalent in modern bilateral relations between two states. It makes Beijing the ultimate arbiter of the economic survival of Kim Jong Un's regime.

It's this leverage, more than any talk of "fraternal friendship" or "historic socialist roots," that explains why Kim Jong Un keeps courting Beijing despite his spectacular rapprochement with Moscow.

International sanctions, a backdrop that changes nothing

United Nations sanctions targeting North Korea's nuclear program have never truly isolated the regime, precisely because China has always maintained, to varying degrees, an essential economic pressure valve. This structural reality explains why Western efforts at maximum pressure on Pyongyang have, for decades, run into a wall: China's determination to preserve a buffer state on its border rather than let it collapse.

This cold, cynical, but from your point of view rational geopolitical logic, Mr. Xi, is precisely what the West must learn to counter with as much consistency and patience as you have put into building it.

I find that 98% figure more revealing than any diplomatic speech. It tells the whole story of the real balance of power between Beijing and Pyongyang, no matter how many fraternal words are exchanged in public.

The forgotten file of North Korean prisoners of war

A parallel diplomacy between Seoul and Kyiv

While you were exchanging congratulatory messages with Kim Jong Un, another story was quietly advancing. Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, met his South Korean counterpart, Cho Hyun, in Seoul, to discuss the fate of North Korean soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces.

Two of these soldiers, captured in 2025, have expressed a wish to defect to South Korea if they are ever released by Kyiv. Seoul maintains that North Korean troops are "constitutionally considered South Korean nationals" and states it "would accept any prisoner of war wishing to come to South Korea."

What this detail reveals about the scale of the problem

This story, almost trivial on the surface, actually reveals the scale of the trap Kim Jong Un has placed his own soldiers in by sending them to fight for Vladimir Putin on a front that isn't theirs. These men, captured thousands of kilometers from home, embody the concrete human cost of an alliance between authoritarian regimes that treat their citizens as interchangeable pawns.

Here is one aspect of this story I refuse to let pass in silence: while Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un exchange diplomatic bows, young North Korean soldiers are languishing in Ukrainian prison camps, sacrificed on the altar of a Russian war of aggression they never had any say in.

The West facing an authoritarian axis taking shape

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea: the dangerous convergence

What is unfolding between Beijing and Pyongyang is only one fragment of a bigger picture. Vladimir Putin'sRussia, Kim Jong Un'sNorth Korea, the ayatollahs' Iran, and Xi Jinping'sChina form a set of authoritarian regimes that, without forming a unified formal alliance, are increasingly coordinating their interests against the international order led by Western democracies.

This convergence isn't a conspiracy theory. It shows up in Iranian arms shipments to Russia, in the deployment of North Korean troops to the Ukrainian front, and now in this Sino-North Korean tightening designed, in part, to counter Moscow's growing influence over Pyongyang.

I keep insisting on this point because it's often downplayed in Western analysis: these regimes don't need a formal treaty to act in concert. Their interests naturally converge against the democratic order, and that's far more dangerous than an official alliance we could at least monitor clearly.

Why Western unity must remain the priority

Facing this dynamic, the Western response cannot be fragmented. Every signal of weakness, every hesitation in supporting Ukraine, every ambiguity over Taiwan, sends an encouraging message to this authoritarian axis. Strategic coherence between NATO, Asian allies like South Korea and Japan, and Western partners more broadly, has never been more essential.

It is precisely because Beijing and Moscow are playing a patient, coordinated game of chess that the West can no longer afford the strategic improvisation of previous decades.

Taiwan, this letter's blind spot

Incursions that keep intensifying

I cannot close this letter without mentioning Taiwan, Mr. Xi. Recent reports describe a rise in Chinese military incursions detected around the island, a trend documented for several months by Taiwanese authorities. This context is not separate from your diplomacy toward Pyongyang: it is the same strategic hand testing several regional friction points at once.

Every aerial or naval incursion around Taiwan serves a goal similar to your rapprochement with North Korea: normalize constant pressure, wear down the opposing side's vigilance, and gradually push back red lines without ever triggering an open conflict you may not yet be ready to face.

What Taiwan teaches us about your intentions

The lesson for the West is simple: never analyze a Chinese diplomatic gesture in isolation. The Pyongyang summit, the pressure on Taiwan, the indirect support for the Russian war machine through trade, all of this forms a coherent strategic continuum, even if it unfolds at different speeds across different theaters.

I've repeated this for months in my columns: China is the greatest strategic threat to the West, even more so than Russia in the long run, precisely because it plays a patient game on several boards at once, while our democracies let themselves be distracted by their short electoral cycles.

South Korea's ambiguous role in this balance

A Western ally caught between several fires

South Korea occupies a delicate position in this regional theater. A historic ally of the United States, it must contend with a North Korean neighbor increasingly courted by both Beijing and Moscow, while maintaining a humanitarian dialogue with Kyiv over the fate of North Korean prisoners of war.

This balancing act illustrates the complexity of the regional game: Seoul must simultaneously deter Pyongyang, preserve its economic relations with Beijing, and strengthen its strategic alliance with Washington, a diplomatic exercise that demands a consistency few democracies can sustain over time.

An emerging cooperation with Ukraine

The dialogue between Andrii Sybiha and Cho Hyun over North Korean prisoners of war illustrates an unexpected but welcome cooperation between Seoul and Kyiv, two democracies each facing, in their own way, the aggression of an authoritarian neighbor backed by Moscow or Pyongyang.

This convergence deserved to be highlighted, because it shows that solidarity between democracies, even geographically distant ones, remains possible in the face of common adversaries.

This emerging solidarity between Seoul and Kyiv gives me a bit of hope in an otherwise discouraging story. This is exactly the kind of democratic solidarity reflex that needs to be multiplied, even on seemingly secondary matters.

What this letter is asking, concretely

To the West: more consistency, less reaction

Mr. Xi, this letter isn't addressed to you alone. It's also addressed to my own Western leaders, who need to stop reacting piecemeal to each of your diplomatic maneuvers. What's needed is a coherent long-term strategy that treats the triangular relationship between Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang for what it is: a structural threat, not a series of isolated incidents.

That means maintaining pressure on all three regimes simultaneously, without ever suggesting that a rapprochement with one could come at the expense of vigilance toward the other two.

To China: a warning without illusions

And to you, Mr. Xi, I have no illusion that this letter will change anything about your strategic calculations. But I want history to remember that some Western observers, as early as 2026, clearly named what was unfolding: an attempt to consolidate an authoritarian axis while Western democracies were still hesitating over the best way to respond.

I am not writing this letter naively, hoping for a moment that Xi Jinping will read these words and change course. I write it because naming a threat clearly is the first step toward countering it, and because silence in the face of this kind of rapprochement would be a form of complicity by omission.

The Western silence that worries me most

Few official reactions in Washington and Brussels

What strikes me, Mr. Xi, is the relative silence of Western capitals in the face of this rapprochement. Neither Washington nor Brussels has produced a major public strategic response following your Pyongyang summit in June 2026. That silence is not neutral: it sends the message that this file remains secondary compared to other Western priorities.

Yet every rapprochement between authoritarian regimes deserves a coordinated response from democracies, if only to signal that the West is watching, understands, and is preparing to react should the situation escalate.

The risk of Western geopolitical fatigue

This relative passivity is partly explained by the geopolitical fatigue spreading through some Western public opinion, saturated by the war in Ukraine, tensions in the Middle East, and domestic economic uncertainty. But it is precisely this kind of fatigue that regimes like yours know how to exploit patiently.

I genuinely fear that this Western fatigue is exactly what you're counting on, Mr. Xi. A democracy worn down by its own internal debates is a democracy slower to react, and you know that perfectly well.

The China-Russia precedent

A "limitless" partnership that set the template

The current Sino-North Korean rapprochement wasn't invented out of thin air. It follows the model of the partnership you yourself sealed with Vladimir Putin, described at the time as a "limitless" partnership. That precedent showed how two authoritarian regimes can coordinate their economic and strategic interests while officially maintaining independence from one another.

Applying that same model to North Korea would let Beijing secure its regional influence without having to formally commit to a binding military alliance, while still reaping the strategic benefits of a closer Pyongyang.

A lesson for Western analysis

Understanding this parallel helps anticipate what comes next: don't expect a dramatic formal treaty between Beijing and Pyongyang. Expect instead a quiet accumulation of sectoral, economic, police, and military agreements, exactly as happened with Moscow before the world realized the scale of the Russo-Chinese rapprochement.

This incremental method, almost invisible at every step, is exactly what makes it dangerous. The West reacts to dramatic ruptures, not gradual drift, and that's precisely the terrain you excel on, Mr. Xi.

What recent history on the Korean Peninsula reminds us

Cycles of tension and rapprochement

The Korean Peninsula has, since the end of the Korean War, gone through recurring cycles of extreme tension followed by limited diplomatic rapprochements. Each cycle has left North Korea more isolated internationally, but paradoxically more resilient thanks to Beijing's constant, if variable, support.

This current rapprochement fits into that long history, but with a new variable: the war in Ukraine and the direct involvement of North Korean troops alongside Russia, which has reshaped regional balances in a way not seen for decades.

Why this moment differs from previous ones

What sets the current moment apart from previous cycles is the simultaneous presence of three dynamics: the Sino-North Korean rapprochement, the Russo-North Korean military alliance, and growing Chinese pressure on Taiwan. Taken together, these three elements sketch a far more complex strategic map than in previous decades.

It's this new complexity that demands, from the West, a sharper analysis and a more coordinated response than in the past.

The history of the Korean Peninsula has taught me to distrust overly optimistic readings of each new diplomatic cycle. What is truly different this time is the Ukrainian context, not any sudden goodwill from one of the three regimes involved.

What Kim Jong Un really gains in this equation

Playing Beijing against Moscow

Kim Jong Un is not a passive actor in this story, Mr. Xi, and I think you know that better than anyone. By simultaneously cultivating ties with Beijing and Moscow, he maximizes his leverage with both capitals, each trying to prevent the other from becoming Pyongyang's dominant partner.

This balancing strategy, practiced by isolated regimes for decades, allows Kim Jong Un to extract economic and military concessions from both sides without ever locking himself into exclusive dependence.

The risk of a North Korean regime more armed than ever

The danger for the West is that this balancing act primarily benefits North Korean military development, particularly its nuclear and ballistic programs, financed in part by Chinese economic concessions and Russian technological support obtained in exchange for sending troops to Ukraine.

This might be the scenario that worries me most in this entire story: a North Korea that emerges from this triangular game more armed, richer, and more unaccountable than before, thanks to the very competition between Beijing and Moscow for its favor.

What allied Asian democracies should do

Strengthen trilateral cooperation with Washington

Facing this dynamic, Japan and South Korea should, in my view, further deepen their trilateral cooperation with the United States, despite the historical bilateral tensions that sometimes complicate this rapprochement. The shared threat posed by the Beijing-Moscow-Pyongyang axis justifies setting aside old grievances in favor of more credible collective deterrence.

This cooperation must include enhanced intelligence sharing, more frequent joint military exercises, and diplomatic coordination against recurring North Korean provocations, whether missile tests or cyberattacks.

An expanded role for the European Union

The European Union, often seen as a secondary player in Asian affairs, would benefit from getting more involved, even if only through coordinated sanctions and explicit diplomatic support for Taiwan and South Korea. A unified Western stance, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific, remains the best structural response to this authoritarian convergence.

I deeply believe that the artificial separation between the European and Indo-Pacific theaters in Western strategic thinking is a mistake. The war in Ukraine and the pressure on Taiwan are two sides of the same authoritarian coin.

Conclusion: a letter, but above all a warning

What this story teaches us

The rapprochement between Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, sealed by a summit in June and confirmed by an exchange of messages in early July 2026, is not a simple protocol exercise. It is a calculated strategic maneuver, driven by China's desire to contain Russia's growing influence over North Korea, while consolidating an authoritarian axis that also includes Iran.

This story must be read alongside the growing military pressure around Taiwan and the tragic fate of North Korean soldiers captured in Ukraine, two realities that underscore the human and strategic cost of these alliances between authoritarian regimes.

I close this letter with the same conviction I started with: naming a threat clearly doesn't solve it, but it's the minimum condition for not being caught off guard when it fully materializes. The West can no longer afford to be surprised by Beijing, Moscow, or Pyongyang.

The duty of Western vigilance

For the West, the lesson is clear: none of these maneuvers should be analyzed in isolation. Strategic coherence, solidarity among democracies, and constant vigilance toward Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and Pyongyang remain the only tools capable of containing this authoritarian convergence before it becomes irreversible.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and my acknowledged biases

I am a columnist and analyst, not a diplomat or an academic specialist in East Asia. I fully acknowledge a pro-Western, pro-Ukrainian editorial line, and a deep distrust of the Chinese, Russian, North Korean, and Iranian authoritarian regimes. This open letter is a rhetorical and editorial exercise, not an actual diplomatic document intended for Xi Jinping.

What I don't know and my method

I do not claim to know the exact internal intentions of Beijing or Pyongyang, which remain extremely opaque regimes. This article relies solely on facts reported by recognized news agencies and media outlets, without unverifiable extrapolation about the deeper motivations of the leaders named.

Sources

Primary sources

Al Jazeera — North Korea's Kim hails 'unshakeable will' to develop ties with China's Xi, July 1, 2026

Anadolu Agency — China's Xi vows to steer ties with North Korea toward long-term development

Secondary sources

Reuters — North Korea, China agree to expand cooperation in various sectors, June 8, 2026

The Guardian — Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un meeting in North Korea, June 8, 2026

The New York Times — Xi, Kim, China, North Korea summit, June 8, 2026

The Tribune — Taiwan detects rise in Chinese military incursions around its territory