Beijing summit fades as tensions return, Xi in Pyongyang
Four weeks after the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing, signs of renewed friction emerge as the U.S. expands its China-related restrictions and Beijing responds
Welcome back to What’s Happening in China, your weekly China brief.
Four weeks after the ceremonious Trump-Xi summit in Beijing, the apparent U.S.-China truce showed cracks this week with the news that China arrested a U.S. citizen and the Pentagon’s announcement that it added Alibaba, Baidu, and BYD, among other companies, to a list of entities it believes have cooperated with the Chinese military.
As CNBC explained, while the “designations do not impose sanctions explicitly,” they mean that “the Defense Department will be prohibited from contracting directly with listed companies starting later this month, and from procuring their products or services through third parties beginning in June 2027.”
China’s Ministry of Commerce, in response, said “China is strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposes this,” and it urged “the U.S. to immediately stop its erroneous practices, immediately withdraw relevant measures and return to the correct track of building a constructive strategic and stable China-U.S. relationship.”
“Otherwise, China will resolutely and forcefully retaliate, and the US will bear full responsibility for the consequences,” the statement said.
Four weeks on, the goodwill generated by the Beijing summit is already proving difficult to sustain.
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While experts continue to digest Xi’s visit to the DPRK this week, one of the more striking interpretations to me came from Seong-Hyon Lee, a senior fellow at the George H. W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations, who concluded that it “was not a routine exercise in economic diplomacy; it marked the formal, institutionalised demise of the post–Cold War denuclearisation paradigm concerning North Korea,” representing “a transition from treating North Korea as a volatile non-proliferation hazard to tacitly endorsing it as a permanent, sovereign nuclear buffer state.”
A conclusion shared by Emma Chanlett-Avery, Deputy Director of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Washington: “Xi may have now calculated that the regime has advanced its capabilities so far that denuclearization is no longer feasible.”
Let’s jump into it.
— PC
Through the Lens
In Focus
I. The Pentagon’s “1260H list”
The Pentagon added a slew of Chinese companies, including Alibaba Group, Baidu Inc and carmaker BYD, to a list of entities it believes have aided the Chinese military, complicating the fragile diplomatic relationship between Washington and Beijing.
The Defense Department published an updated “1260H list” Monday evening stateside — a roster of companies the Pentagon considers affiliated with China’s military or defense industrial base.
The designations do not impose sanctions explicitly, but mean the Defense Department will be prohibited from contracting directly with listed companies starting later this month, and from procuring their products or services through third parties beginning in June 2027.
Read: Pentagon expands list of China military-linked firms to include Alibaba, Baidu in fresh blow to diplomatic thaw (CNBC)
Related: Beijing ‘strongly dissatisfied’ with Pentagon move against China tech firms (Nikkei Asia)
II. Xi’s visit to Pyongyang
The state visit by Xi Jinping to meet with Kim Jong-un was not a routine exercise in economic diplomacy; it marked the formal, institutionalised demise of the post–Cold War denuclearisation paradigm concerning North Korea and the definitive codification of what may be termed the “Mediator’s Veto”.
The clearest signal from the summit lies in what was deliberately left unsaid. A rigorous textual tracking of Chinese state readouts(Opens in new window) and Xi’s front-page essay in the North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun reveals the absolute, systematic erasure of the word “denuclearisation”. As recently as his 2019 Rodong Sinmun essay, Xi still endorsed a political resolution of Korean Peninsula issues – language that at least gestured toward an eventual settlement. The vanishing of even that framing removes the last rhetorical bridge to nuclear disarmament. By replacing these foundational non-proliferation terms with a commitment to support North Korea’s development along a path conforming to its own national conditions, Beijing has executed a calculated pivot.
This represents a transition from treating North Korea as a volatile non-proliferation hazard to tacitly endorsing it as a permanent, sovereign nuclear buffer state.
Read: Xi’s visit to Pyongyang did not revive denuclearisation diplomacy – it buried it (Lowy Institute)
Related:
Analysis: Why China’s Xi wants a ‘brighter’ future with North Korea (CNN)
Russia–North Korea Military Cooperation in Response to China’s Tactical Ambiguity (Asia Society Policy Institute)
Asia ASAP: Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un Meet in Pyongyang (Asia Society Policy Institute)
III. “Do not spread bad news.”
Li Xi, a financial journalist at a Beijing media outlet, told Tian Jian that beginning in the first half of last year, his publication introduced new rules governing coverage of “negative” economic conditions. These included a long list of topics — the property market slump, the collapse of local government revenues from land sales, declining household incomes, existential challenges facing businesses, corporate layoffs and unemployment, and the banning of coal-burning for rural household heating. All of these were marked as demanding “caution.” “Our editors have repeatedly told us to be careful with our pitches,” Li said, “and instead to ‘sing the praises of a bright future,’ and not spread bad news.”
“Writing about which stocks are underwater, about rising social security contributions, about farmers not being allowed to burn coal for heat — none of that is acceptable,” Li added.
Stories on these topics, said Li Xi, have gradually come to be classified as “high-risk story pitches.” Even when they are not explicitly prohibited, they tend to be rejected at the pitch stage, and rarely do they ever find their way into real editorial discussions. “At our meetings, we don’t even bring up these kinds of negative pitches anymore,” he said.
Read: The Economic Downturn and China’s Silent Press (田間 Tian Jian, Lingua Sinica)
Related: Beijing is squeezing journalists but the media is self-sabotaging too (Whipling, Too Simple, Sometimes Naive)
