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Song Tao

Song Tao, chief of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) International Liaison Department, returned home on Nov. 20 after visiting North Korea as a special envoy for President and CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, but there was no word on whether he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The absence of reports on a meeting in either side’s state-run media after Song’s return is being viewed as an odd signal. In the past five years, four senior officials at the department head (ministerial) level or higher have visited North Korea before Song: Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference Vice Chairman Wang Jiarui (July 30–Aug. 3, 2012, as International Liaison Department chief), National People’s Congress Vice Chairman Li Jianguo (Nov. 29–30, 2012), Vice President Li Yuanchao (July 25–28, 2015), and Politburo Standing Committee member Liu Yunshan (Oct. 9–12, 2015). All four had meetings with Kim.

But a Nov. 20 Xinhua report only stated that Song had “met and talked with members of the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) leadership,” without mentioning Kim’s name. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that Song delivered a gift for Kim while meeting with KWP vice chairman Choi Ryong-hae – second in the North Korean hierarchy – upon his Nov. 17 arrival in Pyongyang. With previous senior Chinese officials having delivered gifts to Kim in person during meetings with him, it read as a signal that the chances of a meeting were never great.

Reports of a meeting could yet emerge. But if it is confirmed that none came to pass, that is likely to be taken as a sign that North Korea-China relations are in an unprecedented slide. If a special envoy for Xi as China’s leader was unable to meet with the North Korea leader, it would mean Beijing’s diplomatic efforts with Pyongyang have failed – and ultimately signal trouble for the international community’s efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.

Experts already view ties between Pyongyang and Beijing as being the worst they’ve ever been. North Korea has expressed unhappiness with veto-holding China’s cooperation with the adoption of several UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions sanctioning it for its nuclear and missile testing. Perhaps the biggest issue is the vast gulf in views between North Korea, which insists on not abandoning its nuclear weapons, and China, which has advocated dialogue-based denuclearization.

Notably, a Xinhua report on Nov. 20 mentioned only that Song and the North Korean officials had “exchanged views on areas of common interest, including relations between parties and countries and Korean Peninsula issues,” without using the terms “North Korean nuclear issue” or “Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.”

“The difference in views on the nuclear issue between North Korea and China is so vast that a meeting wouldn’t do any good,” said University of North Korean Studies professor Yang Moo-jin. “There’s a chance they did meet because it was decided [not meeting] would just be embarrassing.”

If a meeting was rejected, it could be taken as an indirect show of Pyongyang’s displeasure about Beijing’s recent pressure and sanctions against it, Yang added.

Korea National Diplomatic Academy professor Kim Han-kwon noted that confirmation of a meeting could yet be announced.

“If things have reached the point where Kim cannot meet with Song as a special envoy, despite it being in both sides’ interest to maintain strategic ties at a certain level even amid the sanctions against the North, that could be seen as showing their interests are just too far apart in terms of the nuclear issue as core message and the North Korea-China relations as a result,” Kim said.

Analysts also said the very fact that Beijing’s envoy was Song – a Central Committee member relatively lower in the power hierarchy than the top 25-ranking Politburo members sent to Pyongyang after previous CCP National Congresses – suggests it viewed the differences with the North as too difficult to bridge.

“After the 17th and 18th CCP National Congresses, it was a Chinese Politburo member who visited North Korea, whereas this time it was a lower-ranking Central Committee member,“ noted Ajou University China Policy Institute director Kim Heung-kyu.

“Also, while Chinese special envoys in the past made North Korea their first stop after the Congress, Song traveled there after first stopping in Laos and Vietnam. North Korea may have been upset or angry about that.”

By Kim Oi-hyun, Beijing correspondent, Kim Ji-eun and Noh Ji-won, staff reporters

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