Chinese and North Korean state media devoted thousands of words to Xi Jinping's meeting with Kim Jong Un last week, but failed to mention a key issue for Washington: the North's persistent pursuit of nuclear weapons that could threaten the United States and its allies in Asia.
Silence speaks louder than piles of carefully crafted propaganda.
Until disarmament talks finally collapsed in 2019, Washington and Beijing were longtime partners in diplomacy, seeking to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions in exchange for much-needed aid and political recognition.
Beijing has routinely called for "denuclearization" - a bureaucratic term for nuclear disarmament - and there was hope in Washington, as well as in Seoul and Tokyo, that China would use its obvious influence as Pyongyang's diplomatic and economic protector to push the North away from the nuclear option.
Xi's visit to Pyongyang on Monday and Tuesday - his first in seven years - could mark the end of that hope - and signal a significant shift in how he views the North's nuclear weapons.
From Beijing's perspective, Xi's silence may be an acknowledgement of how far North Korea's nuclear program has come since Kim Jong Un took power in 2011 and how unlikely it is that diplomacy can force the North to give up the weapons it sees as its greatest guarantee against outside interference.
The Chinese leader's last trip to North Korea, in 2019, was completely different – Chinese media quoted Xi as saying that his country would play a constructive role in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Beijing wants, above all, stability in North Korea and the region. A collapse in Pyongyang could set millions of people adrift across their long shared border.
To that end, China has often avoided directly insisting on ending North Korea's nuclear program, according to analysis by Jiyong Zheng, dean of the Institute of Regional Studies at Tianjin Foreign Studies University in China.
Instead, Beijing called for the denuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula—careful wording that allowed China to also express a desire to end U.S. obligations to use its nuclear arsenal to protect South Korea and the deployment of nuclear-capable American bombers near the Korean Peninsula.
In recent months, Beijing has signaled that it wants to prioritize stabilizing the situation on the peninsula, with denuclearization as a secondary goal, Zheng wrote.
"China is increasingly concluding that a rigid approach to denuclearization in the first place is impractical and could worsen regional security," he said.
For Kim Jong Un, the absence of any public mention or criticism of his nuclear weapons is a victory. He has long sought international recognition for his country, which could lead to the lifting of UN sanctions.
When asked on Tuesday whether Seoul should lower expectations of Beijing as Xi appeared to be dodging the nuclear issue in Pyongyang, South Korean Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Park Il insisted that China continues to support nuclear disarmament as a goal.
Similarly, after last month's summit between US President Donald Trump and Xi, the White House said the two leaders had reaffirmed their shared goal of denuclearizing North Korea.
China, however, only announced that the US and Chinese leaders discussed the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.
On Sunday, Kim's sister and senior official Kim Yo Jong dismissed as "fake information" a US report on the Xi-Trump meeting.
Kim Jong Un opened a new facility last week to produce nuclear weapons components and vowed to build up nuclear forces "at an exponential rate." His sister also said any US pressure to denuclearize North Korea was an "anachronistic dream."
It's possible that China doesn't want North Korea and the United States to get too close, said Park Won Gon, a professor at Iwata Women's University in Seoul, adding that Beijing might prefer to keep the North in its sphere of influence and use that relationship as leverage in its dealings with the United States.
Beijing's silence should not be seen as a bureaucratic oversight, but as a deliberate strategic signal.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung told reporters on Monday that North Korea produces enough nuclear fuel annually for about 10 to 20 bombs and is close to perfecting its intercontinental ballistic missile technology that could deliver a nuclear bomb to the US mainland.
Kim emphasized that nuclear weapons are an essential part of the North's national identity. He enshrined North Korea's nuclear status in the Constitution and devoted increasing amounts of resources, industry, and administration to maintaining it.
Some analysts see China's avoidance of the word "denuclearization" during Xi's visit this time as a clear shift in Beijing's stance and a tacit acceptance of North Korea's nuclear status.
"Beijing's silence should not be seen as a bureaucratic oversight, but as a deliberate strategic signal," said Seong-Hyeon Lee, a senior fellow at the George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China relations.
He said that "by tacitly accepting North Korea's nuclear status, Beijing is strengthening its position as an indispensable stakeholder in all future negotiations," and that the change could mean that the US, Japan and South Korea will have to do more to dissuade North Korea from its current nuclear policy.
Even so, China's acceptance of North Korea's military ambitions may have limits because while Xi's visit signals a "strategic embrace of Kim," it "is not a blank check for North Korea," said Leif-Erik Isley, also a professor at Iwa Woman's University.
Beijing wants stability and respect for its regional ambitions, Isley said, and "North Korea's continued expansion of military capabilities is pushing the boundaries of what its larger neighbor will tolerate."
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