Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un have held talks at the start of the Chinese president’s trip to North Korea, rebooting a troubled alliance as the pair face their own challenges from Donald Trump.

Xi’s two-day visit is the first by a Chinese leader to North Korea in 14 years, after relations between the cold war-era allies deteriorated over Pyongyang’s nuclear provocations and Beijing’s subsequent backing of UN sanctions.

China’s Xinhua news agency said the leaders held their first round of talks soon after Xi landed in Pyongyang with his wife, Peng Liyuan, the foreign minister, Wang Yi, and other officials.

Xinhua did not provide details, but North Korea’s nuclear programme is expected to top the agenda, months after Kim’s second denuclearisation summit with Trump ended in failure.

Reports said 10,000 people waving flowers and chanting slogans greeted Xi at Pyongyang’s airport, where he was met by Kim and his wife, Ri Sol-ju. Chinese media footage showed hundreds of people lining the streets as Xi was driven to the city centre.

In an unprecedented move for a visiting leader, Xi was shown around the Kumsusan Palace mausoleum, where the preserved bodies of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, and his successor, Kim Jong-il – the grandfather and father respectively of the current leader – lie in state.

The Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of North Korea’s ruling party, devoted the top half of its front page to the summit, including a colour photograph and a profile of the Chinese leader.

It said the visit came at a time of “complex international relations” and proved that Beijing attached “high importance” to its ties with North Korea. “Our people are proud of having a trustworthy and close friend like the Chinese people,” it said.

Xi is expected to pay homage at Pyongyang’s Friendship Tower, a monument to the Chinese troops who saved North Korea from defeat during the Korean war.

Analysts expect Xi to use his state visit, arranged to coincide with the 70th anniversary of China-North Korea ties, to demonstrate Beijing’s influence in the region amid uncertainty over the future of Trump’s efforts to strike a deal with Kim on nuclear weapons.

“For North Korea, the coming meeting will serve to show the US that China has its back and to send a message to Washington it should stop its maximum-pressure posture,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor of North Korean studies at Kyungnam University.

The summit is also designed to strengthen ties between the two neighbours after years of friction over Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programmes. Xi and Kim were expected to discuss economic ties and aid. There were reports that China may send hundreds of thousands of tons of rice to drought-stricken North Korea after the visit.

Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping at their meeting in Beijing, China, in 2018. Photograph: AP

In a rare commentary in the Rodong Sinmun published before his visit, Xi suggested China could play a role in bridging the gap between North Korea and the US over denuclearisation.

Talks between Kim and Trump in Hanoi in February ended without an agreement after the sides differed on how far North Korea should go in dismantling its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.

Hailing the “irreplaceable” friendship between North Korea and China, Xi outlined a “grand plan” for permanent stability in east Asia, adding that Beijing would play an active role in “strengthening communication and coordination with North Korea and other relevant parties” in nuclear talks.

Observers expected Xi to endorse North Korean demands that the US reciprocate with sanctions relief for every step the regime takes towards dismantling its nuclear facilities.

However, Zhao Tong, a North Korea expert at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre, a thinktank in Beijing, said he did not expect any substantive discussions on denuclearisation during the meeting, because “China and North Korea do not have enough mutual trust”.

Kim has made four trips to Beijing to since March last year. He has also held two summits with Trump, three with the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, and this April travelled to Moscow to meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

On Thursday South Korea urged Kim to meet Moon again before Trump visits Seoul next week after attending the G20 summit in the Japanese city of Osaka, while the US said its door remained “wide open” for nuclear talks.

Stephen Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea, said stalled talks could restart without preconditions. “The door is wide open to negotiations and … we expect and hope that in the not too distant future we will be re-engaged in this process in a substantive way,” he told an Atlantic Council forum in Washington.

Biegun said the US was willing to discuss all of the commitments Trump and Kim had made at their first meeting in Singapore last year, including security guarantees for North Korea, but added that progress would require Pyongyang to take “meaningful and verifiable” steps towards denuclearisation.

“China is not doing this as a favour to the United States of America,” he said of Xi’s trip. “This is China’s national interests, and in this case Chinese national interests and American national interests coincide. We have every expectation that President Xi will continue to send constructive but appropriate messages during his meetings.”

Xi and Kim are not expected to issue a communique, and authorities have imposed tight restrictions on media coverage. International journalists in Pyongyang have been told they will not be able to cover the summit, while foreign media organisations that had initially been invited to attend were unable to secure visas.