China and South Korea issued a joint call for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula at a summit in Seoul yesterday that was seen as a pointed snub of nuclear-armed North Korea by chief ally Beijing.
In a joint statement after their talks, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and South Korean President Park Geun-hye reaffirmed their “firm opposition” to the development of nuclear weapons on the peninsula, but seemed divided on how best to persuade the North to give up its bombs.
While Park told reporters that the two sides had agreed to use “all means” possible to bring denuclearization about, Xi said that “dialogue and negotiation” were the best way forward.
“There was certainly a difference in perspectives, but that has always been there,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies. “South Korea might have liked Xi to say something more direct toward the North, but that was wishful thinking.”
If the joint statement marked no departure from established Chinese and South Korean policy toward North Korea, the fact that it was released at a summit in Seoul carried significant symbolic weight.
It was Xi’s first trip as head of state to the perennially volatile Korean Peninsula and his second summit with Park, who visited China last year.
With North Korean leader Kim Jong-un still waiting for an invitation to Beijing, Xi’s decision to visit Seoul before Pyongyang was seen as a calculated rebuff that spoke to the strained relationship between Pyongyang and its historic and most important ally.
“No previous Chinese leader has put South Korea before and above the North like this,” said Aidan Foster-Carter, a Korea expert at Britain’s Leeds University.
In what some saw as a display of pique at Xi’s visit, North Korea had conducted a series of rocket and missile launches over the past week, and pledged further tests in the future.
Seoul had been hoping that yesterday’s joint statement would include a strongly worded warning to Pyongyang, but analysts had forecast that Beijing was unlikely to up the rhetorical ante by any significant degree.
It made no mention of North Korea’s nuclear tests, although in her comments afterwards, Park said both sides had reaffirmed their “resolute opposition” to any further testing.
The statement did stress the importance of finding a way to get the long-stalled six-party talks on North Korea up and running again.
Beijing has pushed for a resumption of the six-party process — involving the two Koreas, China, the US, Japan and Russia, but Seoul and Washington insist that Pyongyang must first make a tangible commitment to abandoning its nuclear weapons program.
As the North’s diplomatic protector and chief economic benefactor, China has repeatedly been pressured by the international community to use its leverage to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, but while Beijing has become increasingly frustrated with the North’s missile and nuclear tests, it remains wary of penalizing the isolated state too heavily.
It is especially anxious to avoid any regime collapse that would result in a unified Korea with a US troop presence on its border.
Washington has played up Xi’s two-day visit as evidence of Pyongyang’s deepening diplomatic isolation.
“The symbolism of a visit by a Chinese leader to Seoul against the backdrop of tensions between North Korea and its neighbors ... is pretty striking,” US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel said.
The wider background to Xi’s trip includes China’s response to the US “pivot to Asia” and the battle between the two major powers for regional influence.
China is currently South Korea’s largest export market and two-way trade stood at about US$275 billion last year, but analysts say Beijing wants to move beyond economic ties, and promote political and security links. That leaves Seoul with a difficult balancing act, given its historic military alliance with the US.
There are about 29,000 US troops stationed in South Korea.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS