China to send envoy to North Korea after Trump-Xi talks

Bloomberg

Chinese President Xi Jinping is dispatching a special envoy to visit North Korea this week, shortly after he hosted US 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 party traditionally briefs Communist allies after the party congress, the timing suggests Song may be carrying a message from the Xi-Trump talks.
After the past two party congresses in 2007 and 2012, the party sent a special envoy to visit North Korea, Vietnam and Laos in succession, with Pyongyang the first stop.
This time around, Song only visited Vietnam and Laos from October 31 to November 3.
Asked whether the special envoy’s visit to Pyongyang had anything to do with Trump’s Beijing trip, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Wednesday that such visits were a party tradition, and that the two sides would discuss matters of mutual concern during the visit.
Trump has repeatedly called on China to use its leverage as North Korea’s top financial backer to pressure Kim Jong Un into giving up his quest for the ability to strike the US with a nuclear weapon. While China has backed tougher United Nations sanctions against the country, it also doesn’t want to see his regime collapse — a move that could bring a refugee crisis and US troops on its border. 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.”
Song will be the first high-level Chinese official to visit North Korea this year. Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin went to 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 gone to the country since he took up the job in August.
Ties between Beijing and Pyongyang have deteriorated this year as Kim ratcheted up his nuclear and missile tests.