China’s envoy to North Korea in Washington to lower temperature on divided peninsula.

Beijing’s special envoy to North Korea is visiting Washington this week for talks about how to contain nuclear tensions on the Korean peninsula, Chinese officials said.

The visit to Washington by Wu Dawei, one of China’s senior diplomats, will be his first to the United States since 2010, according the New York Times. He will meet with Glyn T. Davies, the State Department’s special envoy on North Korea, and other American officials, the Times reported.

The visit, announced by the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday, is part of a flurry of diplomacy centered on North Korea as Washington and South Korea continue trying to defuse tensions without rewarding the provocative saber-rattling of of Pyongyang’s untested new leader, the New York Times reported at the weekend.

South Korean Foreign Minister, Yun Byung-se, will meet with the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, in Beijing this week, again to discuss North Korea, Yonhap reported.

Meetings are also planned by U.S. and South Korean military. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey added a stop in South Korea to an official travel itinerary that includes talks in China with his military counterparts. A range of regional security issues are on the agenda in both countries and are expected to include North Korea.

In Beijing Friday, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said at his regular news briefing that Mr. Wu would be in Washington at the invitation of Mr. Davies and would participate in “an in-depth exchange of views” on the “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”