(Tzou Wen-feng, Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Strategic Studies, National Defense University)
China’s Premier Li Qiang attended the 9th Trilateral Summit among China, Japan and the Republic of Korea in Seoul from May 26 and 27, 2024. On the afternoon of the first day, he held talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Samsung Electronics Chairperson Lee Jae-yong respectively, and in the evening he met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The Trilateral Summit was held in the following morning, and later at noon, Li Qiang attended the 8th China-Japan-South Korea Business Summit with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts.
This Seoul Summit was held four and a half years after the last Chengdu Summit in 2019. While the main reason for this hiatus was the pandemic, the Summit had also been suspended in 2016 and 2017 due to discord among the three countries. Beijing’s interest in the trilateral summit was waning for a time, which reflects the extreme vulnerability of the trilateral relations between China, Japan, and South Korea to mutual friction. South Korea played host to the resumed summit, and we could perhaps deduce what strategic intentions and layout China hopes to achieve through this meeting by analyzing Li Qiang’s comments on five occasions.
First, Li Qiang expressed to Yoon Suk Yeol that he is willing to expedite the second phase of the Free Trade Agreement negotiation, the construction of the Changchun International Cooperation Demonstration Zone with South Korea, and strengthen cooperation in high-end manufacturing, new energy, artificial intelligence, biomedicine and other fields. China will further expand market access and strengthen service guarantees for foreign investment, and hope to carry out two-way exchanges between local governments, education, sports, media, and youth. The two sides agreed to hold a high-level strategic dialogue on diplomacy and a 2+2 dialogue at the vice-ministerial level on diplomatic security in due course, as well as launching a Track 1.5 dialogue mechanism to enhance the functions of the Economic Ministers’ Meeting, the Committee for the Promotion of Cultural Exchanges, and the cooperations in industrial investment, production, supply chain, and export control.
In addition, Li Qiang’s meeting with Lee Jae-yong was the only separate talk with business leaders. He emphasized that the cooperation between Samsung Electronics and China is a symbol of mutual benefit and cooperative development. He pointed out that foreign enterprises are an indispensable and important force for the development of China. The Chinese market has always been open to foreign enterprises, and will steadily promote institutional opening up and provide a high-quality investment environment. South Korean enterprises are welcome to expand investment in China.
Second, Li Qiang told Fumio Kishida that their mutual history and the Taiwan issue are principal to the political foundation of China and Japan relations. The Taiwan issue is the core of the interests to China. He hopes that Japan will implement the consensus reached by leaders of both sides at the APEC San Francisco meeting in 2023, consolidate mutual trust, deepen cooperation, and properly manage divergence to create a positive atmosphere for stabilizing relations. Li also pointed out that the complementary economic advantages of the both sides have long existed, and they should jointly maintain the stability and free-flowing of industrial and supply chains, and the global free trade system, and China is willing to continue carrying out friendly exchanges in multiple fields with Japan. He also emphasized that China is highly concerned about the discharge of treated radioactive water into the sea, and hopes that Japan will take a constructive attitude towards issues such as long-term international monitoring arrangements and earnestly fulfill its responsibilities and obligations. The two sides agreed to strengthen dialogue and communication, convene a new round of high-level economic dialogue and high-level cultural exchange mechanism in due course, and continue to promote consultations on the issue of discharged treated radioactive water, and maintain coordination on international and regional affairs.
Li Qiang also put forward five-point proposal to deepen tripartite cooperation, including: 1. To promote the comprehensive restart of cooperation and foster positive interplay between bilateral relations and trilateral cooperation; 2. To deepen economic and trade connectivity, maintain the stability and smoothness of the industrial and supply chains, resume and complete the negotiation of the trilateral free trade agreement; 3. To lead scientific and technological innovation cooperation, and China will establish a China-Japan-South Korea Innovation Cooperation Center to strengthen collaborative innovations and cooperation in frontier fields; 4. To boost people-to-people exchanges, and take opportunity in the China-Japan-South Korean 2025-2026 Year of Cultural Exchange; 5. To strive to promote sustainable development, strengthen exchanges and cooperation in the fields of low-carbon transformation, climate change, aging, and epidemic response to epidemics. Li also hoped that all parties should be committed to play a constructive role in easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula and advancing the political settlement process of the peninsula issue, and leverage their respective development strengths boost the momentum of ASEAN Plus Three cooperation; China is willing to work with South Korea and Japan to promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind and promote stable and long-term cooperation among the three parties.
At the business summit, Li Qiang proposed that Japanese and Korean companies can use the China International Supply Chain Expo as a platform, to maintain the stability of industrial and supply chains, strengthen joint research and development and collaborative research with China, and jointly promote technological progress and enhance industrial competitiveness.
In short, in terms of geostrategy, it can be seen that China believes Japan and South Korea have normalized their relations, particularly in the joint statement of the US-Japan-ROK summit in last August that was clearly targeting China. It was mentioned they strongly oppose China’s dangerous and aggressive behavior in the East China Sea and South China Sea disputes, and any unilateral actions attempting to change the status quo in the Indo-Pacific region, calling for the peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues, and the three countries will conduct regular military exercises. Therefore, it is necessary for Beijing to release incentives to ease relations with Japan and South Korea to avoid becoming isolated in the China-Japan-South Korea triangle. However, as Japan’s pro-American stance is difficult to change, China calls on Japan to keep its promises and carefully deal with issues related to their mutual history, Taiwan, and the discharge of treated radioactive water. However, it adopts a co-optation strategy with South Korea by releasing economic benefits and hope to encourage pro-china factions in South Korea to influence government policy .
In terms of economic strategy, China, on the one hand, combines the needs of Japan and South Korea for economic development, focuses on reaching a free trade agreement negotiation as soon as possible, and plans to increase regional trade volume and multi-field cooperation so as to create incentives that can affect Japan’s and South Korea’s foreign policies; on the other hand, Li Qiang has repeatedly called on Japan and South Korea to jointly maintain the smoothness of the industrial and supply chains and the stability of the global free trade system, which seeks to increase the embedding of production and supply links with China and create obstacles to de-couple from China.
While the economic and trade cooperation between China, Japan, and South Korea is indeed likely to be further strengthened in the future, constraining structural factors such as the international political and economic landscape of the power game between China and the US, the regional confrontation in Northeast Asia, the North Korean issue, sovereignty disputes, and many others, nevertheless expose the fragility of China, Japan, and South Korea relations.
（Translated to English by Chen Cheng-Yi）
