BEIJING — A senior North Korean military official’s visit here Wednesday appears to have been organized on short notice, and was probably prompted by North Korea’s concerns about a planned meeting between President Xi Jinping of China and President Obama, analysts said.
Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, a member of the inner circle of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, arrived in Beijing two days after the United States and China announced that Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi would meet in California early next month.
Vice Marshal Choe, 63, who is the political overseer of the North Korean military, met with Wang Jiarui, the head of the international department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The vice marshal, sent by Mr. Kim as a special envoy, received only modest coverage in the Chinese state news media.
The Chinese government has shown irritation with Mr. Kim, who is regarded as a far less reliable ally than his father, Kim Jong-il, particularly after he defied Beijing to order a nuclear test in February and the launching of a three-stage rocket in December.
Since then, North Korea has repeatedly requested invitations for a high-level visit to Beijing but has been rebuffed, Chinese experts on North Korea said Wednesday. That Mr. Xi and Mr. Obama are to hold talks June 7-8, in which North Korea is certain to be a topic, must have increased the demands from officials in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, for an audience in Beijing, the experts said.
“The North’s provocations backfired and have pushed China and the U.S. closer together, resulting in more frequent high-level exchanges between the two countries,” Zhang Liangui, an analyst at the Communist Party School, was quoted as saying in The Global Times newspaper. “So it is trying a new way to sabotage Sino-U.S. ties.”
In sending Vice Marshal Choe, Kim Jong-un was hoping to get “China’s understanding and support” but was unlikely to achieve it, said Cai Jian, deputy director of the Center for Korean Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
“Following the nuclear test, North Korea repeatedly asked to send a special envoy to China to explain, but the Chinese government always turned it down,” Mr. Cai said.
It was not clear whether Vice Marshal Choe would meet with President Xi, but Mr. Cai said he believed that the chances “are not very great.”
At the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s daily briefing, a spokesman, Hong Lei, repeated the standard line that China seeks “peace and stability” on the Korean Peninsula and a return to talks aimed at denuclearizing the peninsula.
The North Korean envoy was probably looking for an invitation for Mr. Kim to visit China, the experts said. But given the young leader’s erratic behavior — including firing six short-range projectiles into the waters off North Korea’s east coast since Saturday — the Chinese may choose not to reward him.
China voted for sanctions at the United Nations after the nuclear test in February, and this month the state-run Bank of China went along with a request from the United States to suspend all transactions with North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank, a financier of the country’s nuclear program.
Adding extra pressure on Pyongyang was the visit to Washington this month by the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, who pledged to remain firm against North Korea’s provocations.
President Park, who speaks Chinese and spoke warmly of President Xi in Washington, is expected to visit China next month.
Vice Marshal Choe is the most senior North Korean official to visit China since Mr. Kim came to power in December 2011.
The vice marshal is an important figure in the firmament around the new leader, in part because he is close to the new leader’s aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, and his uncle, Jang Song-taek, said Evans J. R. Revere, a former specialist on North Korea at the State Department.
Vice Marshal Choe also holds three senior positions: a member of the National Defense Commission, member of the Politburo Presidium of the Korean Workers’ Party and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the party.
The Chinese have been unnerved by a series of changes at the top of the North Korean military as Mr. Kim tries to consolidate his power.
“I do think the Chinese are uncomfortable with all the musical chairs of defense personnel under Kim Jong-un and their lack of knowledge about them,” said Victor D. Cha, who ran North Korea policy at the National Security Council during the presidency of George W. Bush.
Mr. Kim made yet another military change on the eve of Vice Marshal Choe’s departure.
Hyon Yong-chol, who was in charge of the military’s field operations as chief of its general staff, was replaced by Gen. Kim Kyok-sik, North Korea’s state-run news media reported Wednesday. General Kim was dismissed as minister of the People’s Armed Forces this month, and his unexpected return to a more powerful position is bound to rattle nerves in the region.
South Korean officials suggested that General Kim, 74, a hard-liner, commanded units responsible for attacks in 2010 that killed 50 South Koreans.