South Korea-Japan-China trilateral summit: Self-interest biggest hurdle to cooperation 

The leaders of South Korea, Japan and China are set to meet in Seoul at the end of May after a five-year hiatus. The detailed agenda is being finalised, but based on the convention of naming the host country first, this year’s summit is expected to be termed the South Korea-Japan-China trilateral summit.

The summit was first proposed at the Breakfast Meeting of the ASEAN Plus Three Summit in 1999. Recognising the need for cooperation among the Plus Three countries — China, Japan and South Korea — in areas such as fostering peace and stability in East Asia, improving economic cooperation and tripartite relations as well as strengthening disaster management, the three countries agreed to hold a trilateral summit on an annual basis. The inaugural summit took place in Japan in 2008.

Although the annual summit is generally focused on economic and cultural exchanges, it was suspended from 2013 to 2014 due to tense South Korea-Japan tensions over historical issues and China-Japan territorial disputes over Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. It resumed in 2019 in Chengdu, China, only to be stalled again for nearly five years because of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as strained South Korea-Japan relations and China-US relations.

Considering the size of the three economies and the dynamics in Northeast Asia, the importance of trilateral cooperation is obvious. The three countries account for one-fifth of the world’s population, GDP and trade, thereby wielding significant international influence.

That said, tough issues await the leaders at the summit. These include sharp disparities in historical interpretations, differences in systems, and divergent views on resolving the North Korean nuclear issue. It’s worth noting that the summit serves as a crucial platform for the three parties to engage in dialogue, especially given the absence of a cooperative environment in Northeast Asia.

In particular, given North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s continued missile provocations, cooperation among the three countries will only be more challenging. But everyone knows that continued dialogue and cooperation among the three countries will contribute to peace, stability and prosperity in Northeast Asia and the world.

Notably, adopting the summit format gives the three countries substantial expectations amid challenging situations. Generally, summits involve the direct participation of top leaders from each country in intergovernmental negotiations, exercising the highest decision-making power to reach an agreement from a macro perspective.

However, critics have highlighted a discrepancy in the representation at the summit. While South Korea is represented by its top leader, the president, in line with its presidential system, and Japan by its prime minister under its Cabinet system, China’s representation is led by its premier, who holds neither the highest leadership position nor heads the cabinet. Thus, they think that the meeting cannot be considered as a summit. Although this is in accordance with the attendance of Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji in 1999, it is a fact that it does not meet the standards and must be improved in future.

Notwithstanding, this remains the only multilateral meeting where the three countries can formally exchange views at the highest level. Institutionally, the establishment of the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat in September 2011 in Seoul laid the foundation of the regularisation of the summit.

Apart from the leaders’ meeting, the three countries have made substantial progress through the regular 21 ministerial-level meetings covering diplomacy, trade, transportation and logistics, culture, health, the environment and sports. In addition, a wide range of cooperation projects have been carried out in the fields of economic development or sustainable development and investment, trade, scientific or cultural and personnel exchanges, which certainly incentivise the three countries to continue their cooperation.

That said, the summit is not looked upon well for its outcomes and effectiveness. While the three countries, as major economic blocs in the East Asia region, agree on the need to create synergies and multilateral collaborations through cooperation, it is difficult for them to reach a consensus on political and security issues.

Add to that the historical, territorial and national sentiment issues among the three countries, as well as deepening US-China rifts and political and security issues arising from strengthening South Korea-Japan-US relations, it is clear that trilateral cooperation is tenuous, with inherent weaknesses that inevitably lead to drifting apart. This not only hinders the chances of reaching a high-level agreement but also obstructs the transition from incremental to transformative growth.

The multilateral summit lacks discipline in reaching common goals because there is a fundamental gap in the way each country prioritises trilateral cooperation projects. South Korea prioritises stability on the Korean peninsula, fostering positive relations with neighbouring countries and seeking regional cooperation in Northeast Asia focused on resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.

As a global power, China focuses on regional cooperation based on strategic competition with the US, in particular, it refuses to withdraw from the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait so as to strengthen its maritime power against the US. Conversely, Japan aims to contain China and establish regional dominance, seeking cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and expanding beyond Northeast Asia to also cover East Asia, including Southeast Asia.

These calculations and the resulting regional strategies of South Korea, China and Japan present the biggest challenge hindering trilateral cooperation. It is time for the three countries to get rid of such perceptions and strategic differences and come up with a substantial solution that would leverage cooperative synergy.

The key is to find a way to manage the fundamental differences in perspectives among the three countries, as such differences may not be fully resolved but can be effectively managed. This entails minimising the negative impact of bilateral disputes while maximising the scope of cooperation.

From this perspective, the three sides should see economic cooperation as the most basic tier of cooperation, and seek to upgrade their cooperation to cross-border issues such as large-scale disaster and humanitarian relief, climate change and atmospheric pollution, the prevention of infectious diseases, countering international terrorism, energy security and so on. Trilateral cooperation is entirely possible in these soft security areas.

At present, the most pressing issue is to reconcile the three countries’ differences on historical issues. This requires Japan’s historical perceptions to be changed. Also, the three countries will have to abandon territorial disputes and geopolitical rivalries.

These conflicting factors cannot be resolved by any country temporarily altering its stance. The shared contradictions among the three countries are constants, not variables. Under such circumstances, if each country only focuses on reaching the goal and fails to form a shared vision for cooperation, continued trilateral cooperation will be difficult to guarantee.

China and the US have tried to manage their conflicts with “managed strategic competition”; this is expected to have a positive effect on bilateral and trilateral relations between the three countries. It is difficult to make progress if competition is not managed.

All in all, while the three countries clearly recognise the need for cooperation, it is undeniable that their sense of urgency has weakened.

China’s dream to be a superpower, the strengthening of the South Korea-US alliance and the US-Japan alliance, as well as the deepening relations between South Korea, the US and Japan, will negatively affect the advancement of trilateral cooperation between South Korea, China and Japan.

However, the fact remains that the three countries are core nations in the East Asian region. As economic, cultural, and personnel exchanges continue to flourish, the interconnectivity among them will only deepen in the future.

I hope that the upcoming summit, hosted by South Korea, can bridge the nearly five-year gap, foster a consensus to embrace a new order, establish a robust cooperative framework for the three sides, and become a historic turning point for an open exchange of views.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “韩日中三国峰会还须增强互相认同”.

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