China’s President Xi Jinping hailed an “invincible friendship” with Pyongyang as he headed to North Korea for a visit Monday, his first trip abroad this year after hosting back-to-back summits in Beijing. China, Washington’s chief geopolitical rival, has been North Korea’s main trading partner by far for decades and a key source of diplomatic and economic support for the sanction-hit country of around 26 million people.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Xi’s trip to North Korea is his first since 2019, and comes after he received US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin for talks separately in China’s capital. It also came as North Korea’s nuclear talks with Washington remain deadlocked. The White House said last month that Xi and Trump “confirmed their shared goal to denuclearize North Korea” during their summit in Beijing. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Friday the two leaders would “exchange views on bilateral relations and issues of common concern”, and “make greater contributions to regional and even world peace”. However, leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister said just a day before Xi’s arrival that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme was “the line of no retreat”. China has “always prioritised stability and is currently having to manage its relations and differences with the US”, Minseon Ku, a diplomacy professor at DePaul University, told AFP.