At the invitation of Xi Jinping, DPRK leader Kim Jong-un paid an unofficial visit to China from March 25 to 28. During the visit, Xi held talks with Kim at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. [Photo/Xinhua] Last week's meeting between President Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, the top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, indicates China is playing an essential role in the settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, according to several US analysts. Kim paid an unofficial visit to China from March 25 to Wednesday, during which he met with Xi in Beijing. China's role is essential, said Jon Taylor, professor of political science at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. The visit to Beijing and the Xi-Kim meeting has reinforced China's role as a central actor in managing security issues in Northeast Asia in general and the Korean Peninsula in particular, he said. During their Beijing meeting, Xi said China will continue to play a constructive role on the issue and work with all parties, including the DPRK, toward a thaw of the situation on the peninsula. Kim said it is his country's consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula and the DPRK is willing to have a dialogue with the United States and hold a summit between the two countries. The Xi-Kim meeting is expected to be followed by a flurry of other talks, such as the late-April summit between Kim and President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea. These are quite relevant to the summit between US President Donald Trump and Kim in May, according to Taylor, who writes about China. The willingness of the principal parties to engage in diplomacy and dialogue on the Korean Peninsula issue is a hopeful sign, Taylor told China Daily. If the Moon-Kim summit goes as well as the Xi-Kim summit, the greater the likelihood that Trump and Kim will be able to ratchet down nuclear tensions and begin to address the challenge of developing a meaningful path to peace. Yun Sun, co-director of the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington, said, The significance (of the Xi-Kim meeting) is that China shows the world that China is indispensable in the process and cannot be excluded. Sun said China has cooperated with Trump on sanctions and placing the maximum pressure on Kim, which has brought Pyongyang back to the negotiation table. Looking into the future, for any deal with North Korea to sustain, China will have to be included and most likely as a guarantor, she said in an email. The more consensus and amity Pyongyang and Seoul can build, between themselves and toward denuclearization, the more foundation it will pave for the engagement between Trump and Kim, she said. The Beijing meeting showed that whatever may come of the upcoming inter-Korean and North Korea-US summits, China will not be a peripheral, Ankit Panda, a senior editor with The Diplomat who covers Asia-Pacific security and the DPRK's ballistic-missile and nuclear-weapons programs, said in a Wednesday post. As this trip represents Kim's first known sojourn outside of the country to meet a foreign head of state, it suggests that the North Korean leader may not be averse to traveling outside of the country (perhaps even overseas) for a summit with the US president, said Victor Cha, Senior Adviser and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a commentary co-authored with Sue Mi Terry, a senior fellow at the CSIS. Ke Yian in Washington contributed to this story. custom photo braceletsilicone diabetic braceletsanimal shaped bracelets rubbercheap silicone wristbands free shippingyouth silicone wristbands
Experts to be sent to repair snapped finger; compensation claim in planA Chinese team has been set up to negotiate with a Pennsylvania museum where the thumb of an ancient Terracotta Warrior statue was broken off and stolen while on exhibit in the US, said an official with the cultural relics authority in Shaanxi province.Zhang Xiaoying, deputy director of the museum and cultural relics department of the Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Heritage, said the bureau will publicize the results of the negotiations as soon as possible.The Terracotta Army is one of the most important archaeological finds in China. The damaged statue of a cavalryman is among the 10 on loan to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The exhibit will run through March 4.The cultural relics bureau said on Sunday that experts would be sent to repair the damage. The bureau also urged the US departments involved to guarantee the safety of the relics.It is unclear if China will cut short the exhibits over property safety concerns or who will pay for the repair work, but Wu Haiyun, an official with the bureau, told China Central Television that there would be a claim for compensation.Wang Dongfeng, a cultural relics repair expert at the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum in Shaanxi, said the repair process is complicated and it would usually take three to five months to restore a Terracotta Warrior.According to the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center, the incident was the only one of its kind in 40 years of loaning out the relics.According to the FBI, the statue's thumb was snapped off and stolen on Dec 21 by a US citizen who was attending a party at the museum, but the damage was not noticed until Jan 8.The FBI later traced it to the 24-year-old, who took a selfie with the artwork before breaking off the thumb on its left hand, pocketing it and leaving the scene.Michael Rohana has been charged with theft and concealment of a major artwork, and was later released on bail, according to Xinhua News Agency.A statement on the website of the cultural relics bureau on Sunday suggested the museum initially failed to inform its Chinese partner. It said the bureau learned of the incident through an online news report and then confirmed the information with the museum.The Terracotta Army - 8,000 life-size clay warriors - was discovered by a group of farmers on the outskirts of the provincial capital Xi'an in 1974.It was built by China's first emperor Qin Shi Huang in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) to protect him in his afterlife.Contact the writers at [email protected]
