AHEAD of their governments planned talks with him, US and South Korean analysts will be focusing hard on two oddities about the visit of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to see Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. The first puzzle is why the trip had not been made almost as soon as Kim announced that he would meet his South Korean opposite number and even more significantly, President Donald Trump. China has a deeply vested interest in the outcome of both talks. A North Korea that abandons its nuclear weapons and even establishes economic links with the South will be a double win for Beijing. Not only will Washington be deprived of the reason to keep a significant military presence to protect South Korea, but any level of reunion between the two halves of the Korean peninsula will considerably strengthen Chinese influence in the region. Although it may currently seem unthinkable, Kim and the members of his regime could follow the example of former communist leaderships in Eastern Europe in a new single Korea finesse their way into positions of corporate if not also political power. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine that the relief in the South at the end of 65 years of high-level confrontation will be so great it will cause the government in Seoul to grant extremely generous settlement terms to the leadership in the North. Therefore, though Kim and Xi were clearly in contact with each other, a face-to-face meeting would have seemed appropriate perhaps even before Kim made his offer of talks with Seoul and Trump. Kim is planning to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April and the US president in May. And then there is the second oddity, that the visit of the North Korean dictator was initially cloaked in such secrecy. It would seem probable the news blackout was at the paranoid Kim’s insistence. He wanted no confirmation of his trip until he was safely back in Pyongyang. This being the case, the Chinese did not entirely play along. There was uncensored footage of Kim’s distinctive train pulling into Beijing and foreign journalists in the Chinese capital were being given unofficial hints that the visit was talking place. However, it was not until Tuesday that the Chinese went public with news of the talks, which they hailed as “successful”. It remains possible the Chinese government was itself anxious to avoid publicizing an encounter which might not have produced the desired result. When China and Russia joined in September’s unanimous UN Security Council resolution to boost sanctions on Pyongyang, Pyongyang was facing a halving of its petroleum products imports and a ban on its textile exports. This sixth round of sanctions since North Korea began illegal nuclear and missile tests in 2006, gave the whip hand to Beijing. In the event, China must be extremely pleased with the talks. Kim went on the record saying he favored the “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” in the right conditions. The most important of those is clearly that Washington disengages with the South, an outcome of even greater strategic significance for the Chinese. Xi will have wanted to make sure that Kim remained on message and doubtless set out the direction he wants the North Korean dictator to take in his talks with Trump. And it seems Kim has agreed to comply.