The unthinkable has happened. Xi Jinping, the man who has steered China with the quiet confidence of a Ming emperor, is off to Pyongyang. A rare visit. A very rare visit. The last time a Chinese leader graced the Hermit Kingdom, the world was a different place. The Cold War was fresh in memory, and the West was still deluding itself that liberal democracy was the end of history. Now, the UK sits on the sidelines, monitoring the Asia-Pacific power shift like a retired general watching a bar fight. But this is no mere scuffle. This is the tectonic grind of history.
Let us draw the obvious parallel: 1939. No, not the war, but the mood. The appeasement, the careful diplomacy, the sense that something enormous is about to shatter. Xi’s trip is a signal. It tells Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul that the old order is fraying. China is no longer the polite factory of the world. It is the arbiter of Asian destiny. Kim Jong Un, the baffling little tyrant with a nuclear toy, is being brought into the fold. Why? Because Beijing knows that the American empire, like Rome before it, is overstretched. The UK, that fading imperial ghost, watches and writes reports. It is the intellectual’s role: to observe the fall and take notes for posterity.
The irony is thick. The UK, which once carved up Asia with gunboats, now monitors a shift that will relegate it to a footnote. Xi’s visit is a masterpiece of realpolitik. He embraces Kim not out of affection but necessity. A nuclear North Korea is a problem for everyone. But a North Korea aligned with China is a strategic asset. It is the barbarian at the gates, but now the barbarian is on the payroll. The Victorian mind would call this ‘influence’. The modern mind calls it ‘soft power with hard edges’.
Meanwhile, the UK’s response is predictable: a statement of concern, a call for denuclearisation, a reaffirmation of the ‘rules-based order’. But what rules? The rules of a world that no longer exists. The UK is like a dandy in a drawing room while the city burns. The intellectual decadence of the West is its inability to see that the game has changed. Xi and Kim are playing chess. The West is still playing checkers.
This visit will not end the North Korean crisis. It will not bring peace to the peninsula. But it will consolidate a new reality: the Asian order is Chinese order. The UK can monitor all it likes. The shift is happening. And history, as always, will not wait for the slow.
