Can China Control North Korea?
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Why is President Xi’s potential trip to Pyongyang so significant for China‑North Korea relations?
China is one of the 21st century's most consequential nations. It has never been more important to understand how the country is governed and what its leaders and its people actually want and believe. Welcome to Pekingology, the podcast that unpecs China's evolving political system and the trajectory of China's domestic and foreign policy. I'm your host, Henrietta Levin, Senior Fellow with the Freeman Chair. in China Studies at CSIS. This is pechynology. Coming out of the big summit in China between President Trump and President Xi, it stood out to me that even though the two sides' public readouts differed quite a lot, the US and China both confirmed the leaders did at least discuss the situation in North Korea.
And now we are hearing that President Xi may travel to Pyongyang in the next few days. Days. This would be his first trip since twenty nineteen and only his second as president. So this seemed like a good time for a deep dive on China's complicated relationship with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. And for that, I am really excited to be joined today by Adam Farrer, who brings tremendous expertise and experience on exactly these questions. Adam previously served as special advisor to the vice president for the Indo-Pacific Space and Intelligence, as well as director for the Korean Peninsula and Mongolia at the White House National Security Committee. Council. He is currently a senior geoeconomics analyst with Bloomberg and a non-resident senior associate here at CSIS with our Korea chair.
Adam, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Great to be here.
To start, hoping you can tell us a bit about yourself. How did you end up focusing on all things Korea?
It was a meandering path that led me to Korea. I actually started my career in the intelligence community focused elsewhere. And in fact, uh despite my deep interest in Asia was was focused on uh parts of the Middle East and uh North Africa, which would surprise very few people looking back at how the United States was positioned in the late two thousands and where a lot of our national security focus was. But had the opportunity to keep pushing and trying to find ways to work on Northeast Asia, moved into the counter-proliferation space, and very quickly found North Korea as a key topic of discussion, both for the work I was doing and personal interest. And so all of that eventually led me to come on board at the end of the first Trump administration as the Korea director, with a deep focus on, at the time, the pressure campaign on Northeast.
North Korea, as President Trump obviously had taken a deep interest in North Korea at the start of his term with fire and fury and eventually all of the pomp and circumstance of summatry with Kim Jong-un, although that ended up not moving in the direction that he had hoped or Kim Jong-un had hoped. And so when I came in, the focus really was about trying to maintain pressure on the North and bring them back to the table. And so from that, moving into The Biden administration had the opportunity to continue thinking about how to address this major geostrategic question of how to address North Korea and how to try and bring in both our allies and partners and then other key international partners like China to address the issue.
And so in that time, had opportunities to work with China and Russia to try to bring North Korea to the table, to try and lower the tension on the Korean Peninsula and find a a path forward that didn't lead to further escalation.
We'll talk about how the conversation the US has with China on these issues has evolved since then. But in a way, even a better throwback to thinking about working with Russia on things. What a time.
Truly. Uh really astounding to think back to sitting at a a Russian guest house outside of Moscow having these deep discussions about where we could work together on North Korea. I will say those conversations were were not uh immensely productive, uh, not surprisingly, but the fact that they were happening w did speak to just a different time.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is President Xi’s potential trip to Pyongyang so significant for China‑North Korea relations?
0:05–4:58
2
How did the Trump‑Xi summit shape the public narrative on denuclearisation of North Korea?
4:58–10:33
3
What does Adam Farrar identify as the real sources of China’s leverage over Pyongyang?
10:33–15:53
4
Why does Beijing prioritize stability on the Korean Peninsula over aggressive pressure on North Korea?
15:53–20:23
5
How is Russia’s growing partnership with North Korea affecting China’s strategic calculations?
20:23–24:44
6
When and why might China use its economic leverage—trade, sanctions, or border controls—against North Korea?
24:44–29:00
7
What is the ‘charm offensive’ and how could a Xi visit to Pyongyang reshape the diplomatic balance?
29:00–33:50
8
Can increased U.S. pressure on China over North Korea lead to meaningful policy change, or is it peripheral to broader U.S.–China ties?
33:50–37:45