China has quietly accepted a nuclear North Korea

Xi Jinping has made a consequential strategic choice. Faced with Kim Jong Un’s growing partnership with Vladimir Putin, Xi is rebuilding Chinese political and economic support for North Korea and abandoning the pretense that Beijing is seriously pursuing its denuclearization.

The result will not be a more restrained Kim. It will be a more dangerous one.

Kim is now positioned to draw military assistance and treaty protection from Russia while continuing to receive the trade, money and political backing that only China can provide. As his nuclear arsenal and conventional forces improve, he will have stronger incentives to take risks against South Korea and the United States. Most alarmingly, should China initiate a conflict over Taiwan, Kim could see an opportunity to exploit America’s distraction.

Washington is poorly prepared for this two-front problem. Xi appears willing to run the risk. Putin appears not to care.

For years, Chinese officials claimed that Beijing wanted both stability and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. Stability was always the higher priority, but China at least supported denuclearization negotiations and some efforts to constrain North Korea’s weapons programs.

That policy is effectively over.

During Xi’s June 2026 visit to Pyongyang, the first by a Chinese leader in seven years, Xi  omitted any meaningful reference to denuclearization. Premier of North Korea Pak Thae-song met with Xi in early July, where Xi again did not mention denuclearization. The silence was striking. These instances followed other notable omissions, including at the 2025 North Korea-China summit. The last time a Chinese official explicitly called for North Korean denuclearization was in May 2024 at the South Korea-China-Japan trilateral summit.  Beijing has tacitly accepted North Korea as a permanent nuclear power, hoping that in exchange it will regain influence over Kim.

Xi’s shift reflects the emergence of Kim’s “Russia option.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea has become an important supplier of artillery ammunition, ballistic missiles and military personnel to Moscow. In return, Russia has offered Kim economic support, diplomatic protection, military cooperation and assistance with missiles, satellites, air defenses and other advanced capabilities. Their 2024 comprehensive strategic partnership treaty includes a mutual-assistance commitment.

Kim can now balance between two patrons, and Xi wants to pull Kim closer. China has intensified high-level diplomacy and promised broader political and economic cooperation following Xi’s summit. The CCP’s fourth-highest official, Wang Huning, visited Pyongyang to meet with Kim on a “goodwill” visit, representing the third major China-North Korea state visit in 2026. Beijing wants to remind Kim that Russia can provide weapons and wartime assistance, but only China can serve as North Korea’s long-term economic lifeline and strategic backstop should the US and South Korea mount an effective counterattack during a conflict.

Xi’s objective is to keep Kim on a leash. But he does not want the leash so tight that North Korea ceases to be useful. That calculation is making North Korea more dangerous.

Kim is expanding and diversifying his nuclear forces while further developing solid-fueled missiles, tactical nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, drones, cyber capabilities and conventional precision-strike systems. Russian assistance and North Korea’s battlefield experience will accelerate that progress.

A heavily armed North Korea with combat experience will eventually force the United States to rethink its combined military posture on the Korean Peninsula.  Washington and Seoul are headed for a series of tense discussions as the US aims to refocus deterrence efforts on the Taiwan Strait just as the North Korea threat grows.  This is just what Xi wants.  From Xi’s perspective, Kim is a liability when he risks an uncontrolled war that could involve nuclear weapons, but an asset when he distracts and stretches the United States.

The combination of improved military capabilities and backing by two outside powers will alter Kim’s appetite for risk. He may increasingly believe that nuclear weapons can shield him from retaliation while he conducts coercive actions below the threshold of full-scale war. Russian treaty commitments and Chinese support could reinforce his expectation that Washington and Seoul would hesitate to escalate.

The gravest danger could arise during a Taiwan conflict.

Kim would not need to coordinate a joint campaign with Xi. He could simply recognize an opportunity. With the US military focused on China, North Korea could launch attacks on Seoul.

Likewise, a war beginning on the Korean Peninsula could create an opening for China to act against Taiwan. Conflict with either adversary could expand into simultaneous war with both, even without formal coordination between them. Studies of this problem have concluded that opportunism may be as dangerous as a deliberate joint plan.

Russia has little reason to restrain this dynamic. Putin benefits when North Korean weapons sustain his war,  when crises in Asia divide American resources and when China and North Korea place additional pressure on the U.S.

South Korea has responded by strengthening missile defenses, long-range strike capabilities, strategic command arrangements and cooperation with the United States and Japan. But the alliance still plans for Korea and Taiwan as separate contingencies. That assumption is increasingly untenable. A major conflict in either sub-theater could quickly engulf both.

Washington must prepare accordingly. It needs integrated planning for simultaneous contingencies together with Japan and South Korea.

Xi has decided that competing with Putin for influence over Kim matters more than restraining North Korea’s arsenal. He wants Kim dependent enough to influence, but dangerous enough to distract the United States.

That strategy may serve Beijing in the short term. It is also increasing the chance that a war over Taiwan becomes a war across East Asia.

About the Author: Daniel Blumenthal

Dan Blumenthal is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. Mr. Blumenthal has served in and advised the US government on China issues for more than a decade. Before joining AEI, Mr. Blumenthal served as senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the US Department of Defense. He served as a commissioner on the congressionally mandated US-China Economic and Security Review Commission from 2006 to 2012, and he was vice chairman of the commission in 2007. He also served on the Academic Advisory Board of the congressional US-China Working Group. Mr. Blumenthal is the author of “The China Nightmare: The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State” (AEI Press, November 2020) and coauthor of “An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century” (AEI Press, November 2012).

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