Xi Jinping is greeted warmly in North Korea on his first state visit there as China’s president. He has backed North Korea’s new focus on economic development, saying in a speech in the capital that the nation under leader Kim Jong-un had ‘initiated a new strategic line of economic development and improving people’s livelihoods, raising socialist construction in the country to a new high tide.’ North Korea remains heavily dependent on aid, mainly from China and food security is a constant concern.