For the visiting comrade from the People’s Republic of China, Kim Jong-un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea pulled out all the stops this week , as only a supreme leader can do. Untold thousands of joyous citizens waved flags at the airport and along the route into Pyongyang, and in the evening fireworks exploded over a stadium full of synchronized dancers, all duly shown on tightly controlled news programs.

What Communist leaders don’t do particularly well, though, is report on what they actually talk about when they get together. Officially, this meeting was about their unbreakable friendship. In fact, that friendship has been on the rocks for some time, and it’s safe to presume that what really led China’s Xi Jinping to call on Mr. Kim was their other mutual “friend,” Donald Trump.

Mr. Xi (“ actually an incredible guy ,” with whom he has a “great relationship,” according to President Trump) is currently embroiled in a brutal trade war with his friend in Washington, who has threatened to impose duties on $300 billion worth of Chinese products if he can’t get the trade deal he wants.

Mr. Kim (from whom Mr. Trump said he recently received what he described as a “beautiful letter”) has held two well-hyped meetings with the American president over the North’s nuclear weapons program and the crippling economic sanctions the North has incurred. But the meetings failed to bridge the divide between Washington’s insistence that the North close down its program, and the North’s offer of gradual downsizing in exchange for sanctions relief.