China, Japan and South Korea, amid regional rivalries, line up leaders’ summit
The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea will meet, possibly next year, in the latest attempt to ease regional tensions heightened by North Korea’s weapons programme and a more visible US military presence.
During a meeting in the South Korean port city of Busan on Sunday, the three Asian countries’ foreign ministers agreed to step up cooperation in key areas, including security, and to lay the groundwork for what would be the first leaders’ summit in four years.
The weekend’s trilateral meeting – the first between the neighbours’ foreign ministers since 2019 – came soon after the Chinese and US presidents, Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, met on the sidelines of the Apec summit in California.
The Asia summit – preparations for which began in September during talks between the countries’ deputy foreign ministers – is in part designed to address Chinese concerns over closer security ties between Japan, South Korea and the US.
While not expected to take place this year, the meeting between Xi of China, the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, and the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, is expected “in the near future”, according to South Korea’s national security adviser, Cho Tae-yong.
“The three ministers reaffirmed … to hold the summit, the pinnacle of the trilateral cooperation system, at the earliest, mutually convenient time,” South Korea’s foreign minister, Park Jin, told reporters. “We agreed to expedite the necessary preparations.”
In comments clearly aimed at security cooperation between Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, urged the three countries to “oppose ideological demarcation and resist putting regional cooperation into camps”.
North Korea was also on the agenda during Sunday’s 100-minute meeting, a few days after Pyongyang successfully put a spy satellite incorporating banned ballistic missile technology into orbit, in its latest show of defiance against UN-led sanctions targeting its nuclear and missile programmes.
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