Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Pyongyang on Monday for a two-day state visit, his first to North Korea in nearly seven years, and was met at the airport by Kim Jong Un with a 21-gun salute, a military band playing both national anthems and crowds waving flags and balloons in the capital's main square.

The trip is Xi's first overseas journey of 2026 and resets a relationship that drifted as North Korea grew closer to Russia. Beijing is using the summit to reassert itself as Pyongyang's senior partner, to pull Kim back from Moscow's orbit and to present a counterweight to the U.S. security architecture binding South Korea and Japan. The two leaders are expected to take up economic aid, the Korean peninsula's nuclear question and a possible message from Washington.

What Beijing wants

Xi, writing in a commentary in North Korea's state newspaper before his arrival, pledged "unwavering" friendship and vowed to deepen cooperation across multiple areas, including the military, according to CNBC. In a separate editorial reported by Al Jazeera, he said maintaining ties had "always been an unwavering policy" of the Communist Party.

Analysts say Xi's central aim is to dilute Russian influence in Pyongyang, built up since Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when North Korea began supplying weapons, artillery and troops to the Russian war effort.

"Xi wants to counterbalance all of the Russian influence over North Korea as a result of their military cooperation in the war in Europe," Victor Cha, who runs the geopolitics and foreign policy department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNBC. "China does not like anyone else having more influence on Pyongyang than they do."

Xi is expected to offer Kim shipments of rice and fertilizer, a resumption of Chinese group tourism and joint economic projects, according to analysts cited by both CNBC and Fox News. China supplied an estimated 95 percent of North Korea's trade in 2022, by the count of the National Committee on North Korea, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

Kim's leverage

North Korea arrives with more bargaining room than at the last Xi-Kim meeting in Pyongyang in June 2019. Last week Kim unveiled a new uranium-enrichment facility and pledged to expand the country's nuclear forces "at an exponential rate." Pyongyang has also picked up cash, weapons technology and combat experience through its partnership with Moscow.

"North Korea has more leverage vis-a-vis China compared to June 2019, when Xi last visited Pyongyang," said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center's Korea Program, citing the Moscow tie, advances in the nuclear program and an improved economy.

Lee said Kim is likely to push for economic concessions and for Beijing's tacit acceptance of North Korea's nuclear status, something she said Russia is believed to have privately conceded. China publicly opposed past North Korean nuclear tests; its current line is ambiguous.

Some analysts told CNBC that Xi may also be carrying a message from President Trump, who has signaled willingness to restart diplomacy with Kim. Pyongyang has insisted Washington drop its denuclearization demand before any talks. On Sunday, Kim's sister and senior official Kim Yo Jong dismissed the U.S. plan for denuclearization as an "escapist and anachronistic dream," Fox News reported.

South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Friday it hopes Xi's visit will "play a constructive role in addressing issues related to the Korean Peninsula."

The counterpoint

Fox News framed the summit as a strengthening of ties between two U.S. adversaries, emphasizing that Beijing has long declined to fully enforce United Nations sanctions on its neighbor and that Xi may sidestep denuclearization to win Kim's alignment. Al Jazeera cast the same meeting as a story of dependence: a sanctioned, isolated North Korea leaning on its only large patron, with China racing to lock in influence before Moscow claims more of it. Both readings rest on the same fact: Beijing and Pyongyang need each other more visibly than at any point since their 1961 mutual defense treaty.

Xi and Kim are expected to hold their formal summit on Tuesday before the Chinese leader returns to Beijing. Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet again in the United States in September.