A TV screen shows a file image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang, during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, on June 21, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

With no obvious options, China appears to be keeping its distance as Russia and North Korea move closer to each other with a new defence pact that could tilt the balance of power among the three authoritarian states.

Experts say China’s leaders are likely fretting over the potential loss of influence over North Korea after its leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the deal this week, and how that could increase instability on the Korean Peninsula. But Beijing may also be struggling to come up with a response because of its conflicting goals: keeping peace in the Koreas while countering the U.S. and its Western allies on the global stage.

Beijing so far has not commented on the deal — which requires both countries to provide defence assistance if the other is attacked — and only reiterated boilerplate statements that it seeks to uphold peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and advance a political settlement of the North-South divide.

The Chinese response has been “very weak,” said Victor Cha, senior vice president for Asia and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, adding that it could be a sign that Beijing doesn’t yet know what to do.

“Every option is a bad option,” he said. “You’re either unable to make a decision because of very strongly held competing views or … you’re just incapable of making a decision because you just don’t know how to evaluate the situation.”

What’s behind the Russia-North Korea security pact? | Explained

Some in Beijing may welcome the Russia-North Korea partnership as a way of pushing back at America’s dominance in world affairs, but Mr. Cha said that “there is also a great deal of discomfort” in China, which doesn’t want to lose its sway over its neighbour to Russia, doesn’t want to see a destabilizing nuclear power on its doorstep, and doesn’t want to bring the conflict in Europe to Asia.

But China isn’t raising these concerns publicly. “They don’t want to push Kim Jong Un further into the arms of Vladimir Putin,” Mr. Cha said, referring to the leaders of the two countries.

Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, declined to comment on the new agreement. “The cooperation between Russia and the DPRK is a matter between two sovereign states. We do not have information on the relevant matter,” he said, referring to North Korea by the initials for its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

John Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, told reporters that the pact between Russia and North Korea “should be of concern to any country that believes that the U.N. Security Council resolutions ought to be abided by.” The Security Council has imposed sanctions on North Korea to try to stop its development of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Kirby also said the agreement “should be of concern to anybody who thinks that supporting the people of Ukraine is an important thing to do. And we would think that that concern would be shared by the People’s Republic of China.”

One area that China could be concerned about is whether Russia will help North Korea’s weapons program by sharing advanced technology, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“If China is indeed concerned, it has leverage in both Russia and North Korea and it could probably try to put some limitations to that relationship,” he said.

The meeting between Putin and Kim this week was the latest chapter in decades of complicated political and military relationships in East Asia, where the Chinese Communist Party, once an underdog, has emerged as a leading power that wields influence over both North Korea and Russia.

That and other developments have raised alarms in the U.S. that Beijing, now the world’s second-largest economy, could challenge the U.S.-led world order by aligning itself with countries such as Russia, North Korea and Iran. Beijing has rejected that allegation.

Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, said Beijing doesn’t want to form a three-way alliance with North Korea and Russia, because it “needs to keep its options open.”

Such a coalition could mean a new Cold War, something Beijing says it is determined to avoid, and locking itself to Pyongyang and Moscow would be contrary to China’s goals of maintaining relationships with Europe and improving ties with Japan and South Korea, she said.

Ms. Sun added that the rapprochement between North Korea and Moscow “opens up possibilities and potentials of uncertainty, but based on what has happened so far, I don’t think that China’s national interests have been undercut by this.”

Closer ties between Putin and Kim could weaken Beijing’s sway and leave it as the “biggest loser,” said Danny Russel, who was the top U.S. diplomat for Asia in the Obama administration.

“Apart from irritation over Putin’s intrusion into what most Chinese consider their sphere of influence, the real cost to China is that Russia’s embrace gives North Korea greater impunity and room to maneuver without consideration to Beijing’s interests,” he said.

Russel, now vice president for international security and diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said that Kim is eager to reduce his country’s dependence on China.

“The dilution of Chinese leverage means Kim Jong Un can disregard Beijing’s calls for restraint,” he said, “and that is much more likely to create chaos at a time when (Chinese leader) Xi Jinping desperately wants stability.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presents a pair of Pungsan dogs to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang, North Korea on Wednesday. (Image provided by Korean State media)
| Photo Credit: AP via KCNA

The story so far: Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a “comprehensive strategic” partnership deal with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang on Wednesday as the two countries sought to deepen their security ties in a bid to challenge the West-dominated world order.

Mr. Putin was on a two-day visit to North Korea – his first in 24 years – and signed the deal that has been hailed as the “strongest between Moscow and Pyongyang since the end of the Cold War” by experts. Kim Jong-un has called it a ‘breakthrough” pact.

Also Read:Kim Jong Un was ‘sincere’ in denuclearisation talks: former South Korea president

What are the historical relations between Russia and North Korea?

Ties between Pyongyang and Moscow go back to the Soviet times. The Soviet Union was the first nation to recognise North Korea, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), when it came into existence in 1948 under Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung. Moscow supported DPRK in the 1950-53 Korean War while the U.S. supported the Republic of Korea (ROK), or South Korea. In a previously classified letter, which is now available in Wilson Centre’s digital archives, Kim Il-sung thanked Soviet leader Joseph Stalin for his “invaluable assistance” to DPRK’s “struggle for independence.”

Stalin’s support for DPRK in the Korean War, however, also benefited the leader’s larger ambition to push back the U.S. in the Cold War, which was evident from another “top secret” letter he wrote under the codename “Fillipov” in 1950. “One might ask why we have now returned to the Security Council. We have returned to continue exposing the aggressive policy of the American government and to prevent it from using the flag of the Security Council as a smokescreen for its aggression. Now that America has become aggressively involved in Korea, it will be very easy to achieve this goal while in the Security Council. I think that this is clear and needs no further explanation,” Stalin said in a letter to the Soviet ambassador in Prague.

Also Read: Russia and North Korea sign partnership deal, vowing closer ties as rivalry deepens with West

Initially robust, relations between the countries declined as the rift between China and Russia grew after the Korean War ended. The Soviet Union also established diplomatic relations with ROK, further isolating DPRK in the region. Russia, which succeeded the Soviet Union, continued these diplomatic relations.

Mr. Putin’s election as President of Russia in 2000, however, somewhat turned the tide in favour of DPRK. After his election, he visited Pyongyang in July 2000, to meet Kim Jong-II, former leader of DPRK and Kim Jong-un’s father, and the two issued a joint criticism of U.S. missile defence plans.

In 2012, Russia agreed to write off 90% of North Korea’s estimated $11 billion debt, although Russia supported UN Security Council sanctions against the North between 2016 and 2017 as Kim Jong-un accelerated the country’s nuclear and missile tests. Kim-Jong un, in fact, attempted to improve his diplomatic ties with the U.S. and ROK in favour of his nuclear programme, while also working on relations with historical allies China and Russia.

Strategic visits by North Korean leaders to Russia are also symbolic of the cooperation between the two countries. Kim Jong-iI visited Russia in 2001, 2002, and in 2010; while his son and current leader Kim Jong-un visited Russia in 2019 and 2023. The two countries also share a land border.

What does the new deal entail?

According to DPRK’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, Kim Jong-un and Mr. Putin discussed a “series of important plans for safeguarding the common core interests while deepening the strategic partnership and alliance relations between the two countries.” The pact, officially called the “Treaty on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation,” calls for immediate military and other assistance “using all available means” if either party is involved in a war, which it claims is in alignment with Article 51 of the U.N. charter (dealing with self-defence.)

The treaty also talks about building a “just and multipolar new world order,” and taking joint actions to strengthen defence capabilities. Food, which is a chronic area of shortage for the DPRK, also finds mention in the treaty.

What does the deal mean in the current geopolitical context?

North Korea has, time and again, expressed its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that started in February 2022, alluding to a crucial positive era in its relationship with Russia. In July 2022, North Korea recognised Donetsk and Luhansk, in Ukraine’s Donbas region, as independent States after Russia and Syria did so. (Both these regions were annexed by Russia in September that year.) DPRK has, in the past, also blamed the Russia-Ukraine crisis on U.S.-led West’s “hegemonic policy”.

The U.S. and South Korea believe DPRK has been supplying Russia artillery, missiles and other military equipment for use in Ukraine, as Russia continues to wage the largest land war in Europe since the end of the Second World War. Russia, which has a vibrant military-industrial base, is reportedly sourcing weapons from North Korea and Iran, while the U.S. and European nations continue to assist Ukraine.

In October 2023, Beyond Parallel, a U.S.-based think tank, reported a “dramatic increase” in freight rail traffic on the land border between Russia and DPRK following a summit between Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin. “Given that Kim and Putin discussed some military exchanges and cooperation at their recent summit, the dramatic increase in rail traffic likely indicates North Korea’s supply of arms and munitions to Russia. However, the extensive use of tarps to cover the shipping crates/containers and equipment makes it impossible to conclusively identify what is seen at (North Korea’s) Tumangang Rail Facility,” the organisation said. Both Russia and North Korea have denied any weapons sale. Experts also believe North Korea is leveraging high-tech nuclear weapons and missile technologies from Russia in exchange for the arms.

Russia has also been a significant supplier of energy to North Korea— even more important after it suffered huge losses in revenue as Europe cut off trade with the country following its invasion of Ukraine. U.S., as a common adversary, also brings Russia and North Korea together as both countries attempt to create a shift in global power away from the West, with China on their side.