China Sending Envoy to North Korea After Trump Talks With Xi
November 15, 2017 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
Chinese President Xi Jinping is dispatching a special envoy to visit North Korea this week, shortly after he hosted U.S. counterpart Donald Trump in Beijing.
Song Tao, head of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Liaison Department, will visit Pyongyang on Friday to brief North Korean officials about last month’s once-in-five-year leadership reshuffle, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
While the department traditionally briefs Communist allies after the party congress, the timing suggests Song may be carrying a message from the Xi-Trump talks. Song had earlier visited Vietnam and Laos from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3 to brief those Communist governments on changes within the party.
The trip will be the first high-level Chinese visit to North Korea this year. Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin visited Pyongyang last October, and then-Chinese special envoy Wu Dawei visited in February 2016. He has since retired and it’s unclear if his successor, Kong Xuanyou, has visited the country since he took up the job in August.
North Korea was on top of Trump’s agenda on his visit to Beijing, where he called on China to put more pressure on its ally to give up its quest to obtain the ability to strike the U.S. with a nuclear weapon.
Official statements from both the White House and Beijing regarding Trump’s visit to China did not refer to any specific progress on North Korea.
“One striking thing was North Korea was absent from his outcome list,” said Shi Yinhong, a foreign affairs adviser to the State Council and director of Renmin University’s Center on American Studies in Beijing. “Apparently, Beijing didn’t make any compromises. But we don’t know what happened behind-the-scenes.”
