Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday said he hopes Beijing and Pyongyang will pursue “sustainable soundness and stable development” in relations.

“I wish that, under the new situation, the Chinese side would make efforts with the DPRK side to promote the relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development,” North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Xi as having said in a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday.

“Thus [both] make a positive contribution to providing the peoples of the two countries with more wonderful happiness and defending