When North Korea carried out its last nuclear test on September 3, 2017, China’s President Xi Jinping was preparing to host the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa at a summit meant to burnish his image as a global statesman ahead of a critical Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress.
The explosion from the underground detonation — Pyongyang’s sixth such test — triggered an earthquake of magnitude 6.3 that shook homes along the North Korea-China border and revived fears of nuclear contamination in the area. It also shifted the slopes of the mountain where North Korea’s underground test sites were located by up to 3.5 metres (11.5 feet).
