Watch the ceremony: twenty-one guns, two national anthems, state dinners, signed agreements, and crowds on cue. Chinese state media called President Xi Jinping’s June visit to Pyongyang “a routine strengthening of ties.”
A more plausible interpretation: The most powerful man in Asia flew there to reclaim a client he was losing — and the choreography itself revealed the anxiety driving it.
HEGSETH STRIKES SOFTER TONE ON CHINA AND STAYS QUIET ON TAIWAN AT SINGAPORE SUMMIT
Four facts in sequence tell the story.
- March 2024, Moscow: Iran’s assistant foreign minister held back-to-back meetings with Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s senior foreign policy adviser, on sanctions evasion and strategic coordination — right after the Putin-Xi summit.
- May 2026, Honolulu: U.S. and Chinese military delegations met under the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement to manage risks of accidental escalation. Both sides kept the channel open.
- June 3-4, Pyongyang: North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un inspected a newly operational uranium enrichment facility, North Korea’s third, and announced plans to expand his nuclear arsenal “exponentially,” just days before Xi’s arrival.
- June 8-9: Xi’s first visit in seven years. The 65th anniversary of the 1961 Mutual Defense Treaty was invoked prominently.
Analysts call this group CRINK: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. The coordination is real. North Korea has sent Russia millions of artillery shells and up to 30,000 troops. Iran supplies drones and missiles. China provides sanctions workarounds and economic lifelines. Russia offers technology and diplomatic cover.
But this is no durable monolith.
For decades, Beijing maintained a near-monopoly over Pyongyang. North Korea served as a vital buffer — the only territory between U.S. troops in South Korea and the Chinese border. Kim depended on Chinese fuel, food, technology, and U.N. protection. Then Ukraine shattered the equilibrium.
Russia’s war of attrition created a desperate demand for artillery. Kim supplied shells, missiles, and soldiers — human wave assaults absorbing casualties at rates consistent with commands that did not plan to bring many of them home. Approximately 6,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed in a foreign war their government will never acknowledge. No names. No ceremonies.
What do you call a government that sends its young men to die in another country’s war and erases the evidence? And what do you call the country that hired them?
In exchange, Kim gained a second patron not beholden to Beijing. The oxygen monopoly cracked. The vassal had options. That is why Xi, the senior partner, had to travel to the junior partner’s capital for the first time in seven years. When the stronger power must remind the weaker one of old loyalties, it signals anxiety, not dominance.
This is not a fortress. It is a communal apartment with quarreling tenants presenting a united front to the outside world. China does not want a truly strong, independent Russia. Russia does not want Iran flooding global energy markets. None wants an erratic nuclear North Korea that could drag them into a war by miscalculation. The fist is real. The fault lines are equally real.
Washington appears to grasp this. The Honolulu military channel shows both sides managing real escalation risks. America’s broader posture focuses on consolidating the Western Hemisphere, extinguishing nearby fires, and shifting regional burdens to local powers under U.S. strategic oversight.
In Korea, a China forced to rein in Kim absorbs responsibility for stability there — a burden transferred, not a concession. If Xi’s visit constrains North Korea’s nuclear expansion, Washington reduces one front without deploying additional forces.
CRINK members are far more fragile than their posture suggests. Russia has burned through a generation of professional soldiers. China faces a property crisis, youth unemployment, and demographic collapse. Iran rules a restive population. North Korea remains one of the world’s poorest states, its people captive rather than loyal.
What truly binds them is shared fear: the fate of dictators who lose power, disarm, or trust Western promises. Muammar Gaddafi disarmed and died in a drainage ditch. Kim has watched. His nuclear arsenal is not a sword — it is an insurance policy.
An alliance forged in fear and corroded by incompatible interests carries a built-in expiration date.
TAIWAN WILL LIKELY PLAY ITS SILICON ‘TRUMP CARD’ IN SECURITY TALKS WITH THE US
Watch what North Korea does in the coming weeks, not what Beijing says. Watch the Iran nuclear file. Watch whether the U.S.-China maritime channel survives the next South China Sea incident. And remember the 6,000 soldiers in unmarked graves.
The cracks are there. The question is who uses them first.
Emzari Gelashvili is a former member of the Georgian Parliament (2008–2012) and a former senior official in Georgia’s Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Defense, and Ministry of Internal Affairs, with a background in counterintelligence against Russian and Iranian intelligence services. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in San Francisco.