China celebrates a ‘new beginning” at the summit with Japan, South Korea

Li Qiang, Premier of China, hailed “a new beginning” in the relationship between China and South Korea as well as Japan. The three countries also pledged to restart talks on a Free Trade Agreement.

In a statement released after their meeting in Seoul, Li, the South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japan’s Prime Minster Fumio Kishhida said that they would continue to discuss ways of accelerating negotiations for a trilateral trade agreement.

The summit was arranged on short notice, and it was the first one of this kind since 2019. It came amid Beijing’s dismay over Seoul and Tokyo participating in US export controls that are designed to limit Chinese access to cutting edge chip technologies.

Li, the former Shanghai Party chief who became Chinese Premier last year, stated on Monday that this meeting marked “both the restart and the new beginning” of relations between Beijing’s and Washington’s allies in east Asia.

Li, who said he was against protectionism and the decoupling supply chains, stated that all three countries had agreed to intensify their supply chain cooperation and improve communication on export control.

Li stated in a press conference held after the summit that “in order to create a favourable environment for all three countries, they must properly address sensitive topics and differences of opinion.”

In a thinly-veiled warning, he also asked Seoul and Tokyo “to take care of each others’ core interests”, in an attempt to warn them against Washington’s increasingly assertive policy on China. The three leaders agreed that they would meet annually.

The official summit agenda focused instead on academic and tourist exchanges as well as cooperation on climate change and pandemic planning.

Li met with Samsung chairman Lee Jae-yong on Sunday to encourage the South Korean technology giant, the world’s leading producer of memory chips and the largest in the world, to invest more money in China.

Li was quoted by the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua as saying that “Foreign funded enterprises are indispensable for China’s growth and China’s Mega-Market will always be opened to foreign-funded businesses.”

Yeo Hankoo, a South Korean former trade minister who is now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, in Washington, stated that it was unlikely that Korean companies would want to invest in cutting-edge technologies in China given the geopolitical climate and the fact that Chinese technology companies and Korean technology firms are now direct rivals in many areas.

Leif-Eric Easley is a professor of international studies and co-ordination at Ewha Womans University, Seoul. He said that China’s re-engagement in trilateral coordination was “good news” to a regional order based on rules.

He warned, however, that Beijing might have the intention of weakening South Korea’s economic cooperation with Japan and US in terms of security. This is especially true when it comes to semiconductor supplies chains.

Jaewoo Choo is the head of the China Centre at the Korea Research Institute for National Security, a think tank in Seoul. He said that the attendance of Chinese leader Xi Jinping would be the key to future success.

Choo said that without the bargaining strength of China’s president, these summits will not achieve their goals.