Beijing sources have reported that state media said on Tuesday following a phone call between the two leaders that Chinese president Xi Jinping told his US counterpart Donald Trump that there have been "positive changes" on the Korean peninsula.
Meanwhile Trump has pushed Xi to increase economic and political pressure on North Korea in the hopes of convincing it to stop the development of its nuclear weapons program. Presently tensions have been high after the North staged a flurry of nuclear and missile tests and leader Kim Jong-Un traded threats of war and personal attacks with Trump.
Moreover
in recent weeks there has been an apparent rapprochement, with the two Koreas
meeting for the first time in two years and Pyongyang agreeing to send athletes
to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea. Further during Xi's phone call with Trump, he also urged the US
president, who has taken a hard line against the trade imbalance between the
two countries, to come to the table on economic issues.