Premier Li Qiang will travel to North Korea this week in the highest-level visit by a Chinese leader since 2019.
Mr Li will be in the neighbouring country Thursday through Saturday, attending events to mark the 80th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's ruling party, the foreign ministry in Beijing said on Tuesday.
The premier’s delegation will pay “an official goodwill visit to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea” at Pyongyang’s invitation, according to North Korean news agency KCNA.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will preside over a military parade on Friday to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea. The North Korean military was expected to display a new generation of strategic missiles and advanced weapons systems at the parade, days after South Korea claimed that Pyongyang had increased its stockpile of nuclear material by accumulating large quantities of highly enriched weapons-grade uranium.
Analysts believe the main attraction of the parade will be a solid-fuel Hwasong-20 intercontinental ballistic missile capable of targeting the American mainland from Pyongyang, according to South Korean state news agency Yonhap.
Mr Kim pledged over this past weekend to develop additional military measures and allocate more strategic assets to respond to the build-up of US forces in South Korea.
“In direct proportion to the build-up of US forces in Korea, our strategic interest in the region has also increased, and we’ve accordingly allocated special assets to key targets of interest,” Mr Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA on Sunday.
At the opening ceremony of an exhibition of Pyongyang’s latest weapons, Mr Kim said on Saturday that it “features the recent results of the important projects” undertaken to put the nation’s military capabilities on “an increasingly modern, advanced footing” with “its nuclear deterrent as the backbone”.
The South Korean military said there were “signs” Pyongyang was preparing to welcome tens of thousands of people at the mega parade, according to Yonhap. Officials from the South said they had detected movements of vehicles and military equipment ahead of the event.
The Chinese premier, considered second in power after president Xi Jinping, will be the most senior Beijing official to attend a North Korean military parade this century.
China has long been one of Pyongyang’s main allies, though North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has sought to balance the relationship in recent years by deepening ties with Russia, singing a mutual defence treaty and sending troops to help Moscow in its war against Ukraine.
A statement by the Chinese foreign ministry called China and North Korea “traditional friends and neighbours" and said it was “an unswerving strategic policy” of the Chinese government and the Communist Party “to maintain, consolidate and develop” relations with North Korea.
China viewed this visit as an opportunity to work with North Korea, “guided by the important consensus reached by the top leaders of the two parties and countries”, it added.
Mr Li has been representing China on foreign trips more frequently as Mr Xi, 72, has curtailed his travel schedule.
Mr Xi last visited North Korea in 2019, before the Covid pandemic, but high-level contacts between Beijing and Pyongyang have picked up since last year.
Zhao Leji, one of the seven members, alongside the president and the premier, of the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee, the apex decision-making body in the country, travelled to Pyongyang in April and met with Mr Kim.
Mr Xi hosted Mr Kim and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, along with nearly two dozen world leaders, at Beijing’s largest military parade ever in early September to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II.
Russia is sending former president Dmitri Medvedev to this week’s celebrations in Pyongyang, KCNA said on Monday.
To Lam of Vietnam will also attend the celebrations. Mr Lam is general secretary of his nation’s Communist Party, the same leadership position held by Mr Xi in China and Mr Kim in the Workers' Party of Korea.
It will be the first visit by a Vietnamese leader to North Korea since 2007, state media said.
Laos president Thongloun Sisoulith, who also serves as general secretary of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, will be in attendance as well.
