Where are the guts and grit?
Published: 22 Jun. 2023, 20:18
Kim Hyun-ki
The author is the Tokyo bureau chief and rotating correspondent of the JoongAng Ilbo.
“Aren’t the articles on the JoongAng Ilbo intentionally critical of China?” Chinese ambassador to Korea Xing Haiming complained, repeating “intentional” several times. When I met him at the Chinese embassy in Myeong-dong, Seoul three years ago, he openly expressed his discontent about a column published on the paper during a dinner banquet he hosted.
He did not stop and only heated up the rhetoric. I could not keep silent. “Ambassador, when playing golf, who intentionally hits a tee shot out of bounds? Everyone intends to send the ball at the center on the fairway,” I said. No article is written to be “intentionally” biased, I explained — diplomatically. But the ambassador was not convinced. While moving to the dinner table, Xing went on to say, “This is the very seat Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong had sat in a while ago. The Korean media reported that I had met 79 influential people since I came to Seoul as Chinese ambassador seven months ago. But that’s not correct. I met more than 100.”
Democratic Party (DP) leader Lee Jae-myung must have been fully briefed about Xing’s personality and behavior before the meeting. Yet his meeting with the ambassador — just one of thousands of director-level officials in the Chinese government — looked as if the leader of the main opposition party in Korea was being lectured by the Chinese ambassador. Lee seemed to volunteer as a sidekick for Xing’s carefully-choreographed stunt — reading a prepared text for 15 minutes before the opposition leader.
DP chief Lee is infamous for his resilient guts — whatever that really means — but was pulled into the play the Chinese ambassador shrewdly staged.
On April 28, China’s new Ambassador to Japan, Wu Jianghao, held a press conference at the Japan National Press Club in Tokyo. He warned, “If Japan chooses to be chained to the U.S.-led chariot aimed at dividing China, its people will be dragged into the fire.” The ambassador was suggesting that Beijing could take military actions against Japan if Tokyo continues to side with the U.S. on the Taiwan issue.
Tokyo-Beijing relations have never been cozy over the past 20 years, but I have never heard such offensive rhetoric from Chinese officials. Such belligerency constitutes a typical case of China’s “wolf warrior diplomacy” toward Korea and Japan, which have opted to take the side of the U.S. in the hegemony contest between the two superpowers. Xing or Wu could not have acted on their own without an order or permit from their home country.
Noticeable was the stark difference in the two countries’ response to China’s warrior diplomacy. In Seoul, the president directly criticized Amb. Xing and complained to the Chinese government.
In Tokyo, the prime minister did not take any action, including summoning Wu. The foreign minister during a parliamentary hearing said that Tokyo protested the Chinese ambassador’s remarks through “diplomatic channels.”
In a recent forum in Tokyo, a senior official from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences briefly mentioned Wu’s remarks. He offered a reconciliatory comment. “Both Japan and China are big countries. Let’s improve our ties by considering each other’s position,” he said.
Insolent behaviors by foreign envoys should be dealt with according to the diplomatic rank. The maneuvering room narrows if a head of state reacts first. Tokyo didn’t. But frankly, I don’t think Beijing would have taken a reconciliatory gesture towards Korea as it did towards Japan, even if Korea had acted calmly like Japan.
The balance in the Seoul-Beijing relations was already broken during the last Moon Jae-in government. Playing tough toward Seoul has become a fixation in Beijing. China does not treat Korea the same as Japan, which has kept its principle on every issue.
If bilateral relations are not “normalized,” Xing-like rudeness can be repeated over and over. It may be right for the president to issue a strong warning towards China. Seoul must make Beijing respect the spirit of reciprocity and rebalance the axis in bilateral relationship.
The government also must think about how to respond to director-level Chinese ambassadors to Korea. Chairman Shin Dong-bin of Lotte Group — which suffered massive losses in China from Beijing’s harsh economic retaliation for Korea’s deployment of the U.S. Thaad missile defense system — turned down an invitation by Xing Haiming to the Chinese embassy in Seoul. Although leaders in Korea may not share such grit, we may restrict ourselves to being a “small nation” if they rush to indulge the Chinese ambassador whenever he summons them.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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