North Korea put up its largest ever military parade on Saturday to mark the 70th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party. The country’s young leader Kim Jong-un boasted in a rare live speech that he was ready to fight any kind of war the U.S. might launch.

Yet, noticeably absent from the speech was North Korea’s mantra of “simultaneously pursuing nuclear weapons and economic development.” Also absent was the test firing of a long-range missile that North Korea threatened recently. Experts had predicted that Pyongyang would launch a long-range missile -- in the pretext of launching a satellite -- around the time of the anniversary on Saturday.

Standing to the left of North Korea’s Kim was Liu Yunshan, who ranks No. 5 in China’s Workers’ Party, the highest-ranking Chinese official to visit North Korea since Kim came to power in late 2011. A telling sign of North Korea’s international isolation, Liu was the only visiting foreign official standing on the podium watching the military parade.

Liu, arriving in Pyongyang on Friday, met with Kim that same evening, delivering a letter from Chinese President Xi Jinping. In the letter, Xi said that China seeks “long-term, healthy and stable development” of its bilateral ties with North Korea. Liu is reported to have been more direct during the meeting, urging an early resumption of the stalled denuclearization talks.

According to China’s Xinhua news agency, Liu told Kim that China is willing to work with North Korea “to strive for an early resumption of the six-party talks on the nuclear issue.” Kim is reported to have told Liu that North Korea “needs a peaceful and stable external environment as it is striving to develop the economy and improve people’s livelihood.”

North Korea is “willing to make efforts to improve relations between the north and the south and safeguard the stability of the peninsula,” Xinhua reported him as saying. In the report, Kim did not raise the country’s nuclear weapons program during the meeting. North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency, reporting on the same meeting, however, did not include Liu’s remarks on the denuclearization talks.

The relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have been strained in recent years, particularly since North Korea held its third nuclear test in 2013. China, North Korea’s traditional ally and on whose economic assistance it relies, is one of the very few countries that has any influence over Pyongyang. As such, China has been repeatedly asked to exercise leverage vis-a-vis North Korea to bring it back to the six party talks. Preferring to avoid a sudden regime collapse right across its border, some experts believe that China has not been as forceful as it could have been in dealing with North Korea.

It is not entirely clear exactly what was said during Friday’s meeting between Kim and Liu. Yet, the Xinhua report has Kim more or less acquiescing to China’s carrot-and-stick approach, saying that Pyongyang is willing to make efforts to improve inter-Korean relations.

Kim devoted much of his 25-minute speech on Saturday to “people,” “troops” and “youths.” Nuclear weapons, missiles or a message to South Korea were never raised. If Kim is sincerely interested in improving the livelihood of his people, as he seems to indicate in his speech, he should give up nuclear weapons. That is the only viable way to make sure that North Koreans “never again” go hungry.