China to send envoy to North Korea

BEIJING: China will send a special envoy to North Korea this week, state media said Wednesday, after US President Donald Trump concluded an Asian tour to rally support against Pyongyang's nuclear threats.

Friday's trip by President Xi Jinping's special envoy, Song Tao, is likely a diplomatic push by China to resolve the nuclear standoff, though the official Xinhua news agency merely said he will discuss last month's Chinese Communist Party congress.

As Beijing prepared for the mission, Pyongyang maintained its war of words with Trump, with a ruling party newspaper saying the US president deserved the death penalty for insulting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

China's announcement came a day after the end of Trump's five-nation tour of Asia, during which the US leader held meetings with Xi and urged him to act fast to rein in North Korea, warning that "time is quickly running out".

Trump has urged the region to take a united stance against the threat posed by isolated North Korea, which has sparked global alarm with its nuclear and missile tests in recent months.

As tensions have surged China has backed a series of United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang and imposed banking restrictions on North Koreans, putting the Cold War-era allies at odds.

Song will be the first Chinese official to make an official trip to North Korea since October 2016, when vice foreign minister Liu Zhenmin visited. Xi has never met Kim.

Washington has pressed China to intensify use of its economic leverage over North Korea to strongarm Pyongyang into halting its nuclear weapons and missile programmes.

Song, who is head of the Communist Party Central Committee's international affairs department, will present to Pyongyang the "consensus" for a peaceful solution that Trump and Xi reached during their meetings, said Wang Dong, foreign policy specialist at Peking University.

"China is now actively making diplomatic efforts," Wang told AFP.

"The envoy's visit is to persuade North Korea, hoping that North Korea will return to the track of peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue," he said.