Chinese President Xi Jinping has written to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offering to work together to “accelerate peace in the world,” North Korea’s state agency KCNA said on Saturday. . “The world, times and history are changing in unprecedented ways,” Xi said in response to a letter from Kim Jong-un congratulating him on his historic re-appointment as leader of the Chinese and national Communist Party in October. “In the face of this new situation, I am ready to make a positive contribution together with you (…) to accelerating peace, stability, development and prosperity in the region and in the rest of the world,” he continued.
The letter comes as tensions on the Korean peninsula have peaked after a record string of missile tests by Pyongyang and Seoul, Washington and Tokyo have intensified military cooperation. Notably, Pyongyang launched an ICBM on November 18, which crashed from Japan, and Kim Jong-un threatened the United States with a nuclear response if his country was attacked.
In an interview last week on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, US President Joe Biden urged Xi Jinping to “unambiguously” tell North Korea not to conduct another nuclear test, as Seoul and Washington give him the intention to do. “It is certain that our diplomacy will endeavor to get China to join the countries that are publicly condemning it today and to use its influence to persuade North Korea,” a senior US official said at the time.