Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea this week helped to improve Kim Jong-un’s international standing and gave him a “big strategic win”, analysts said.

Pyongyang has become increasingly close to Russia in recent years and has sent thousands of troops to support its war against Ukraine, but Xi’s visit reinforced the long-standing economic and cultural ties between China and North Korea.

It was the Chinese leader’s first foreign trip of the year and came less than a month after he hosted back-to-back meetings with his US and Russian counterparts Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Relations between China and North Korea cooled after the border was sealed during the Covid-19 pandemic and Pyongyang strengthened its military relationship with Russia.

But Patricia Kim, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said Pyongyang was now benefiting from Beijing and Moscow’s “implicit rivalry” for influence and was the “biggest winner”.

“The fact that neither Beijing nor Moscow is pressuring Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table or to commit to denuclearisation is a big strategic win for Kim Jong-un,” she said.