Sun Lee
In the midst of tension in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, Japan, China and South Korea held a trilateral summit in Seoul on May 27, the first since July 2019. The summit was attended by Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Japanese Premier Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol.
For the sake of optics, it was important as it took place after a gap of nearly four years. But there lies a crude reality: The summit was held when the region was in the grip of tension on account of China’s aggressive military activities.
Particularly in the Taiwan Strait, the Eastern Theatre Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army held military drills on May 23-24. China described it as “punishment” drills and “a necessary and legitimate move to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.” It went on to say that the military exercise in the Taiwan Strait was aimed at cracking down on “Taiwan independence separatist forces and their separatist moves and sending a warning to external interference and provocation.”
In the background of such provocative statements and confrontational scenarios in the region, Japan, China, and South Korea held their trilateral meet. Since Chinese President Xi Jinping kept himself out of the summit, military, foreign affairs, and security issues were off the agenda at the meet. Instead, on the agenda were economics, trade, climate change, cultural exchanges, health, aging populations, science and disaster response, Reuters reported.
Given the deep political distrust between the three countries, partly due to stronger defence and security ties of Japan and South Korea with the US, and partly owing to China’s growing military assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region, the summit failed to bring forth “any game changing improvements in their relations,” the South China Morning Post said.
In fact, just a week before the summit, relations between Tokyo and Beijing dipped to a new low after Chinese Ambassador to Japan Wu Jianghao warned Japan of consequences if it continued to support Taiwan. “If Japan ties itself onto the chariot of splitting China, the Japanese people will be led into a pit of fire,” Chinese Ambassador Wu Jianghao was quoted by CCTV as saying.
This threat reminded East Asian watchers of a similar warning that was issued by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) against Japan in July 2021, when the world was reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. In a video aired by the CCP, Japan was warned of a nuclear attack if it interfered in China’s handling of Taiwan.
“We will use nuclear bombs continuously. We will do this until Japan declares unconditional surrender for the second time,” the CCP said through a video aired nearly four years ago. Following international hue and cry, this video was eventually removed, but the deep scar caused by this threat on Japanese people’s mind got revived after Chinese Ambassador Wu Jianghao recently warned of consequences. Global Times, China’s state-backed media outlet characterised Japan as a “rogue state” after Tokyo released treated radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear water plant into the Pacific Ocean in August 2023. These developments have added to historical distrust between Japan and China.
Similarly with South Korea, China’s relations have not been evenly balanced. Instead, both are sharing frayed relations since Seoul decided to install the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in 2017. Last year, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol created a stir in China’s diplomatic and strategic circle when he, in an interview with Reuters, said increased tension around Taiwan were due to attempts to change the status quo by force. Then despite strong opposition from Beijing, Seoul continues to have engagements with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), described by China as the “spokesperson and enforcer of US interests.”
Nearly two weeks before the Japan, South Korea and China trilateral summit, NATO hosted military staff talks with Seoul at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Discussions between a delegation of South Korean military officials and NATO’s experts from both International Staff and International Military Staff focused on the “ongoing partnership, resilience building and future opportunities for cooperation,” NATO said in a statement on May 14.
In its 2022 strategic concept paper, NATO defines the alliance as an integral part of transatlantic efforts to counter Chinese military, economic and industrial challenges. China’s concern is that under the administration of Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea’s engagement with NATO has strengthened. President Yoon Suk-yeol has himself attended NATO summits twice in the recent past – once in Madrid in June 2022 and another time in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital city in July 2023.
On the economic front too, China and South Korea are not sharing good relations. In 2023, South Korea’s exports to China saw a decline of 20%, plummeting to $124.8 billion from $155.7 billion in 2022. The same year, South Korea also witnessed a trade deficit of $18 billion with China, marking the first time this has happened since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Amidst all this, the US trade restrictions on China are proving a boon for South Korean solar-power cell manufacturers, OCI and Hanwha Solutions. They were struggling to compete with Chinese firms for the international market space. They are currently benefiting from opportunity provided by US trade and technology restrictions on Beijing, which have slowed China’s manufacturing and global value chains, the Japan Times said.
All along, both Japan and South Korea are supporting the US-led CHIPs and Science Act which curbs the sale of advanced chips to China, depriving the country of the computing power it needs to develop artificial intelligence at scale. In the backdrop of such developments, there is no guarantee that the three neighbours will not struggle to move beyond surface-level diplomacy even after the trilateral summit.
