Takeaways from the China-Japan-South Korea Trilateral Summit
By Yun Sun • Yuki Tatsumi • Jenny Town
- May 31, 2024
China and the 2024 Trilateral Summit
The development in Northeast Asia has not been in China’s interest, especially in terms of strengthening alliances between the U.S., Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea), as well as increased trilateral coordination and cooperation between the three countries. For Beijing, the May 2024 China-Japan-ROK Summit is primarily aimed at retaining the affinity of Japan and South Korea so as to counterbalance U.S. influence.
This is particularly true in the case of South Korea. In the Chinese view, President Yoon Suk-yeol has done almost nothing positive to warrant a friendly policy from China. From the U.S.-Japan-ROK Trilateral Summit in Camp David last year to Seoul’s increasingly vocal positions on Taiwan and the South China Sea; from the diplomatic spats over the Chinese ambassador in South Korea to Yoon’s open criticism of China’s relationship with North Korea, Beijing views South Korea as determined to pursue an external alignment strategy that binds Seoul closer and more tightly to the U.S. This is fundamentally in conflict with China’s vision of tying South Korea closely into China’s orbit, and at least ensuring South Korea’s neutrality in the strategic competition between U.S. and China.
The May 2024 Trilateral Summit, in fact, indicates a change in China’s strategy toward South Korea. Compared to the post-Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) punishment China imposed in 2016, Beijing is much more tolerant and flexible rather than coercive and punitive toward Seoul. As China understood the diplomatic and political importance of hosting the Trilateral Summit for South Korea, the agreement to participate in the Summit is almost seen as a bestowing of benevolence by the Chinese.
However, it also means that people’s expectations of the deliverables from the Summit, especially their implementation, should be extremely moderate. The Summit is more symbolic than substantive, representing a desire to appear collaborative among the three countries, albeit for very different reasons. South Korea has rather successfully leveraged its alliance relations and international standing to shape China’s choice.
Japan’s Role in the 2024 Trilateral Summit
Leaders from China, Japan and the ROK met for the Ninth Trilateral Summit in Seoul on May 27, 2024. At the end of the Summit, the three leaders agreed to institutionalize the trilateral consultation through regular summit and ministerial-level meetings. They identified a total of six priority areas—grassroots exchanges, sustainable development, economic and trade, public health and aging society, science and technology, digital transformation, and disaster relief and safety—to expand cooperation among the three countries.
They also agreed on the importance of “Trilateral plus X,” emphasizing the importance of the three nations taking a coordinated approach in engagement with other countries in the Indo-Pacific, such as Mongolia and Southeast Asian Nations, in the six areas identified at the Summit.
Predictably, the Summit focused almost exclusively on less political issues, such as public health, grassroots exchanges and sustainable development. While the leaders did acknowledge that North Korea’s reckless behavior remains a shared security concern and discussed the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, they avoided other controversial issues, including Beijing’s recent staging of a “mock” missile strike in the east of Taiwan following Lai Ching-te’s inauguration as the new Taiwanese president.
The three countries’ efforts to restart diplomatic engagement in the current strategic environment—intensifying U.S.-China strategic competition—particularly through holding a trilateral summit for the first time in five years—puts Japan in a complicated position. On the one hand, Japan needs engagement with Beijing, whether through bilateral or trilateral channels, as an important component to manage regional tensions. By focusing more on the areas of shared concern instead of the points of tension, the China-Japan-ROK trilateral dialogue has provided an important forum where the leaders can keep their communication open.
However, on the other hand, as the strategic competition between the U.S.—Japan’s only ally—and China aggravates and increasingly turns into a rivalry in which both sides take a “whole-of -government” approach, it has become difficult for Japan to carve out the areas to engage with Beijing. For example, cooperation in areas such as trade and the economy, science and technology, and digital transformation will become challenging as the U.S. pushes its allies and partners to move toward “de-risking” from China in the face of the U.S.’ growing willingness to penalize the companies that have significant engagement with China by threatening to restrict the access to its market. Furthermore, as Beijing’s posture against Taipei becomes more aggressive, the cross-Strait situation forces Tokyo to consider how it can continue to strike a balance between calling Beijing out for these aggressive behaviors while maintaining engagement, which could potentially impact its alliance with Washington.
South Korea’s Perspective on the 2024 Trilateral Summit
On May 27, the ROK hosted the Ninth Trilateral Summit, where leaders from South Korea, China, and Japan reaffirmed a shared commitment to “peace, stability and prosperity” both on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia. In a Joint Statement, the three countries vowed to increase trilateral cooperation in a number of key areas, with a heavy emphasis on repairing trade relations, increasing technology cooperation and promoting cultural exchanges.
After years of highly strained relations amid growing U.S.-China rivalry, the resumption of this trilateral forum is the first step to finding a new mechanism and mandate for cooperation within the region and avoiding Cold War-like alignments from hardening. Much like the U.S.-ROK-Japan Trilateral Summit last August in Camp David, a considerable effort at this China-ROK-Japan Trilateral Summit was also invested in trying to institutionalize and regularize these meetings to create more stable and consistent relations over the long term. While this trilateral process held its first summit in December 2008 and met annually through 2012, meetings since then have been sporadic and subject to political disputes and tensions among the three nations, even despite having a dedicated trilateral secretariat tasked with facilitating the trilateral summit and other dialogue and cooperation programs.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry hailed this summit a great success, with multiple and tangible outcomes, including a Summit Joint Statement, a Joint Statement on Future Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, and a Joint Statement on a 10-Year Vision for Trilateral Intellectual Property (IP) Cooperation. These documents address a number of sensitive and contentious issues among the three parties, putting forth rather lofty goals that, in some cases, run counter to South Korea and Japan’s cooperation with the United States. This is especially the case in the economic sphere, where China seeks to slow Seoul and Tokyo’s economic de-risking and decoupling efforts that have started to redirect supply chains and trade away from China toward the United States. That said, the ability to implement many of the commitments listed in the Joint Statement is questionable. And despite high praise for the documents themselves, expectations for robust implementation are low.
Just ahead of the Trilateral Summit, South Korea and China held their own bilateral talks on May 26, where they outlined a number of initiatives to put bilateral relations on both security and economics back on a more positive track. From this meeting, ROK President Yoon Suk-yeol and Chinese Premier Li Qiang agreed on a “Korea-China 2+2 Diplomatic and Security Dialogue,” as well as to restore other channels of diplomatic and security communications, such as the Deputy Foreign Ministers’ Strategic Dialogue. While these initiatives create space for the two to build greater cooperation in the security realm, they are still far from agreement on regional security dynamics or how to address them. Restoring channels and mechanisms to communicate about these tensions, however, is a welcome sign. The two leaders also agreed to discuss advancing to a second phase of the Korea-China Free Trade Agreement (in place in 2015), moving beyond trade in goods and expanding into services including culture, tourism, and law. This is a big step in moving past the animosities that grew from Chinese sanctions imposed on South Korea in 2016 over its deployment of the THAAD system, which amounted to major revenue losses in tourism and cultural content.
However, also just ahead of the Summit, North Korea notified Japan of its satellite launch plan and then proceeded with the launch just hours after the meeting ended. The timing of this launch was not a coincidence and should be viewed as part of North Korea’s displeasure over the summit and the mention of “denuclearization” in the Summit’s Joint Statement. In fact, North Korea issued a strong, unusually quick reaction to the Trilateral Summit, underscoring the ongoing challenges in regional security dynamics that the trilateral and bilateral dialogues aim to address.
Overall, both the Trilateral Summit and bilateral China-ROK talks seemed to bring wins for ROK President Yoon, under his vision of Korea as a “global pivotal state.” However, whether this success is more symbolic than substantive remains to be seen in how quickly and how sustainably efforts to implement these various plans move forward.
Header image source: Office of the President of the Republic of Korea