Why not invite Xi Jinping to the summit?

YOU SANG-CHUL
The author is the head of the China Institute of the JoongAng Ilbo and CEO of China Lab.

It seems that the Korea-China-Japan trilateral summit will be held in late May. The meeting will finally be realized after numerous rumors since last year. President Yoon Suk Yeol, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Chinese Premier Li Qiang will attend the summit. The Korean and Japanese participants are the top leaders in state affairs, while China is sending its second man. Recently, the status of the second-in-command has also significantly weakened. Therefore, it is questionable whether it is fair to call this a trilateral “summit.”

The Korea-China-Japan summit was first held in 1999. The Asean Plus Three summit was launched in 1997 at the invitation of Asean. The three-way summit was created on the sideliens of the Southeast Asian gathering when President Kim Dae-jung, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji and Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi had a breakfast meeting in 1999. From 2008, Korea, China and Japan began to hold trilateral summits regardless of their non-Asean status, and the current format took shape.

So far, no one has raised any objection to the Chinese premier’s attendance at the meeting. The first Asean Plus Three summit held in 1997 was about cross-border economic issues, including resolving the Asian financial crisis. At that time, the premier had enormous power and was considered the “president of economic affairs” in China. But things have changed. The power of the Chinese premier has rapidly dwindled since Xi Jinping took power.

The China Development Forum held in Beijing late last month is a good example. The forum, which was established in 2000, is held after the Two Sessions. More than 100 CEOs of world-class companies and scholars meet with the Chinese premier for conversations in the forum. As it offers a valuable chance to gauge the direction of the Chinese economy, many prominent U.S. businessmen attend the event. But this year, Premier Li Qiang’s role was limited to giving a speech at the opening ceremony, which had been done by the deputy premier in the past.

For a really important conversation, President Xi Jinping selected only a few of the participants. That’s why some say the Chinese president is now taking the role of the premier, as well as the general secretary of the Communist Party of China. In that case, I think it would be better if President Xi, not Premier Li, attend the tripartite summit. It better suits the name of the summit.

Why don’t we politely invite President Xi to the trilateral summit scheduled to take place in Seoul later this year? If the format of the meeting changes, the content of the trilateral relationship will change, too.