Stop the lethargic China diplomacy

Foreign ministers of Korea, China and Japan met in Busan last weekend 51 months after their last gathering in August 2019. But the three ministers couldn’t even fix the date for a tripartite summit of their leaders. The Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s plan to invite Chinese President Xi Jinping to Seoul for a summit within this year or next January will most likely not be realized. The government puts the blame on China’s passive attitude toward the summit, but diplomatic experts point to the Yoon administration’s lack of diplomatic ability.

The meeting in Busan among the three foreign ministers drew much attention, as it could offer an opportunity to put the trilateral summit back on track after a four-year hiatus. In a meeting in Seoul in September, senior diplomats of the three countries agreed to hold the summit as soon as possible, but the agreement was in vain. Even a joint press conference couldn’t take place after the Chinese foreign minister hurriedly left Korea, citing his schedules back home.

Diplomatic circles attribute it to the changed atmosphere in China after the Sino-U.S. summit in San Francisco on the sidelines of the APEC Summit two weeks ago, which gave China a respite in its hegemony war with the U.S. Beijing has found less need to seek cooperation from Korea and Japan after the bilateral summit turned to an appeasement phase.

Nevertheless, the Yoon administration cannot avoid criticism for its lethargic diplomacy toward China. Suspicion even arose over whether the Korean embassy in Beijing detected the changed atmosphere in China. For instance, the Chinese Foreign Ministry did not even send its diplomats handling Korean affairs and an interpreter to the APEC Summit. And yet, our Foreign Ministry reportedly held on to the hope for Yoon’s summit with Xi until the last minute. If the report is proven true, the Foreign Ministry and the Office of National Security should be held accountable for a lack of diplomatic skills and information.

The government needs to reinforce the alliance and the tripartite cooperation. But it must not give up or make light of a stable management of our relations with China. If Seoul bets all on one side of the two superpowers, it will only raise its diplomatic risks.

China still accounts for a large share of our trade, and its role is required to restrain North Korea from engaging in nuclear and missile provocations. The government must make a persistent effort to draw support from China. It also needs to address misunderstandings and hostilities toward China after Chinese Ambassador Xing Haiming’s controversial remarks in a meeting with the Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung in June. The time has come for the government to review what went wrong and find a breakthrough to normalize our relations with China.