China’s Premier Li Qiang to visit North Korea in highest-level visit since 2019

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BEIJING (AP) — China’s Premier Li Qiang will go to North Korea this week in the highest-level visit by a Chinese leader since 2019.

Li will lead a government delegation from Thursday to Saturday to attend events marking the 80th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s ruling party, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

China has long been the North Korean government’s most important ally and source of support, though North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has sought to balance that in recent years by building ties with Russia. He has sent troops to help Moscow in its war against Ukraine.

Russia is sending former President Dmitri Medvedev to this week’s anniversary celebrations, North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said Monday.

A statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry called China and North Korea “traditional friends and neighbors” and said it is “an unswerving strategic policy” of the Chinese government and the ruling Communist Party “to maintain, consolidate and develop” relations with North Korea.

Li is one of seven members of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party’s Politburo, the apex of power in China. As premier, he is generally considered the No. 2 leader after President Xi Jinping. Li has been representing China on more foreign trips as the 72-year-old Xi curtails his travel schedule.

Xi’s last visit to North Korea was in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vietnam’s top leader, To Lam, will also visit North Korea this week for the anniversary celebrations, the country’s government announced Monday. He is general secretary of the Communist Party, the same leadership position held by Xi in China and Kim in North Korea’s Workers’ Party.

It will be the first visit by a Vietnamese leader to North Korea since 2007, Vietnam’s state media said.

The president of Laos, Thongloun Sisoulith, will also attend, KCNA said last week. He is general secretary of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party.

High-level contacts between China and North Korea have picked up since last year. Zhao Leji, another member of the Politburo Standing Committee, traveled to North Korea in April and met Kim in the capital, Pyongyang. Kim visited China last month, joining Russian President Vladimir Putin and others at a Chinese military parade in Beijing.