Seoul, South Korea. The Chinese and Japanese leaders were scheduled to arrive in Seoul and meet South Korea’s president separately on Sunday, a day before their first trilateral meeting in more than four years.
No major announcement is expected from Monday’s South Korea-China-Japan trilateral meeting. But simply resuming their tripartite talks at the highest level is a good sign and suggests that the three Asian neighbors are determined to improve relations.
A trilateral leaders’ meeting was supposed to be held annually after their inaugural meeting in 2008. But the meeting has stalled since the last one in December 2019 in Chengdu, China, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the complex ties between the three countries.
After arriving in Seoul on Sunday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will hold bilateral talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to discuss ways to promote cooperation and other issues, according to South Korean officials. Li and Kishida are also expected to meet bilaterally.
When Yoon, Li and Kishida meet for a trilateral session on Monday, they will discuss cooperation in six specific areas: people-to-people exchanges, climate change, trade, health issues, technology and disaster responses, according to South Korea’s presidential office. . .
Sensitive issues such as North Korea’s nuclear program, China’s claim to self-governance in Taiwan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea are not on the official agenda. But some experts say North Korea’s nuclear program, which poses a major threat to the security of South Korea and Japan, will likely be discussed between the three leaders, although it is unclear if and how they will publish the content of their discussions. extent.
The three neighbors are important trading partners with each other and their cooperation is key to promoting regional peace and prosperity. But they have repeatedly been embroiled in bitter disputes over a range of historical and diplomatic issues arising from Japan’s wartime atrocities. The rise of China and the United States’ push to bolster its Asian alliances have also significantly impacted their tripartite ties in recent years.
South Korea and Japan are vibrant democracies and key military allies of the United States in the region, but their ties in recent years suffered a huge setback over the issue of Korean forced labor during the Japanese colonial period of 1910-45. Bilateral ties have strengthened dramatically since last year, when Yoon took a major step to move beyond historical grievances and address shared challenges such as nuclear threats from North Korea, intensifying Sino-U.S. rivalry. United States and supply chain vulnerabilities.
Since 2022, North Korea has been engaged in a provocative series of unprecedented weapons tests to build powerful nuclear missiles capable of hitting key sites in the continental United States, South Korea and Japan. In response, South Korea, Japan and the United States have expanded their trilateral security partnership, but that has drawn rebukes from China and North Korea.
South Korea, Japan and the United States want China – North Korea’s main ally and economic conduit – to use its influence to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But China is believed to have clandestinely supported the impoverished North.
Experts say South Korea, China and Japan now share the need to improve relations. South Korea and Japan want better ties with China because it is their largest trading partner. China, for its part, likely believes that further strengthening cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the United States would harm its national interests.
“With the complex changes unfolding in our region and beyond, we hope the upcoming summit will inject new impetus into trilateral cooperation and provide better ways to achieve mutual benefit for all three countries,” the spokesman said on Thursday. Chinese Foreign Ministry Wang Wenbin.
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