Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure.
The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties.
Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two agreeing to dial down a dispute that has roiled markets and disrupted global supply chains.
Photo: AFP
Trump’s departure left the Chinese leader to take center stage at the APEC summit, where he has framed Beijing as a counterweight to a US-led international order.
Speaking at the summit’s closing ceremony yesterday, Xi said next year’s APEC meeting would take place in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.
Leaders also agreed to deepen cooperation on artificial intelligence as well as issues such as low birthrates, population aging and urbanization.
The Chinese leader has used the summit to rekindle old ties with nations frozen by Beijing for years.
Xi on Friday met with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on the sidelines of the event — the first formal talks between the two countries’ leaders since 2017.
He told the Liberal leader he was determined to work together to get relations back on the “right track” and invited Carney to visit China.
Xi also sat down with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for the first time since she was appointed last month.
Takaichi said she told Xi that she wanted a “strategic and mutually beneficial relationship between Japan and China.”
However, she told reporters that she also raised a number of thorny issues with the Chinese president, saying that it was “important for us to engage in direct, candid dialogue.”
The Chinese leader then turned his attention to the South Korean president in what was their first sit-down meeting since Lee’s election in June.
Lee welcomed Xi at a grand opening ceremony complete with soldiers wearing traditional garb, footage shared by South Korean broadcaster Yonhap TV showed.
Seoul has long trodden a fine line between top trading partner China and defense guarantor the US.
Relations with China soured in 2016 after Seoul agreed to deploy the US-made THAAD missile defense system. Beijing hit back with sweeping economic retaliation, restricting South Korean businesses and banning group tours.
Cultural spats — including China’s claims over the origins of the Korean staple dish kimchi — have also soured public opinion against Beijing.
South Korea — which this week also agreed a multibillion-dollar economic deal with the US — remains heavily dependent on trade with its vast Asian neighbor.
Also hanging over relations are Beijing’s close ties with North Korea, which remains technically at war with the South.
The South Korean Presidential Office said that Lee planned to raise the issue of “denuclearization” with the Chinese leader, as well as broader peace efforts on the peninsula.
Ahead of Lee and Xi’s meeting, Pyongyang dismissed Seoul’s hopes for denuclearization as a “pipedream” which “can never be realized even if it talks about it 1,000 times.”
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