Did Xi Jinping lecture President Lee?… A Veteran Journalist’s View After 40 Years

[Choice Times=Se-Hyung Kim, Veteran Journalist]

After seven years, the South Korea–China summit has taken place. Did President Lee Jae-myung achieve any meaningful results?

Korea’s key interests were:

1. Asking China under Xi Jinping to help thaw the frozen inter-Korean relationship;

2. Lifting China’s “Hallyu ban” (限韩令) imposed after the 2017 THAAD deployment, which has blocked Korean K-pop, games, dramas, films, cosmetics, and other cultural exports;

3. Dismantling China’s illegal structures installed in the West Sea;

4. Expanding bilateral economic exchanges, with the attendance of the heads of the four major conglomerates.

Xi Jinping, on the other hand, wanted President Lee to side with China on the Taiwan issue; to respond together in unity (anti-Japan) by invoking the past narrative that Korea and China joined forces to defeat Japanese militarism; and to “stand on the right side of history”—in effect urging Lee to side with Xi rather than with former U.S. President Donald Trump.

China invited President Lee for a state visit and appeared to extend the highest courtesy by arranging meetings not only with Xi Jinping but also with the second-ranking leader Li Qiang (premier) and the third-ranking Zhao Leji (equivalent to Korea’s National Assembly speaker).

Yet after the summit there was no joint statement, which is said to be extremely rare since the establishment of diplomatic relations.

Xi Jinping did not grant President Lee a single concrete request.

In the stock market, expectations that the Hallyu ban would be lifted pushed up the share prices of cosmetics, gaming, and K-pop companies such as HYBE on the days of the visit. When it became clear that nothing had been resolved, those stocks plunged, and investors who suffered losses likely ended up resenting the summit itself.

The Chinese are fond of ambiguous and boastful expressions. On the Hallyu ban, they either deny its very existence or evade the issue with phrases such as “three feet of ice does not melt in a single day.”
Even though it is an obvious fact that exports of dramas, K-pop, and cosmetics remain blocked, China insists that there is no such ban, which leaves an impression that dishonesty is almost habitual.

When asked to move Kim Jong-un to engage in dialogue with the South (perhaps to help with local elections?), China reportedly replied that it is already playing a constructive role and will continue to do so.
Cheon Young-woo, former senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs and security, who has extensive experience with North Korea policy, commented: “China never really had the power to move North Korea. I have never seen such a case.”

When China experts at institutions such as the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy are asked about the summit’s outcomes, they point to the signing of ten MOUs, including an agreement to proceed with follow-up negotiations on the services sector under the Korea–China FTA. That, at least, seems somewhat positive.

As for the other MOUs, their scope appears too narrow, with nothing that truly stands out.

President Lee’s statement during his Q&A with reporters—that the illegal structures in the West Sea would be resolved step by step—can also be counted as one achievement.

Still, if this seven-year-in-the-making summit truly marked the start of reconciliation, should there not have been at least one big symbolic concession? One is left wondering whether Xi Jinping could really offer no more than this.

Overall, it felt as though China carefully took only what served its own interests.

An unnamed diplomat observed that Xi’s call to “stand on the right side of history” sounded like an adult lecturing a child. President Lee’s response—“I took it as a saying of Confucius”—will likely be seen as a far more mature way of speaking than Xi’s.

Regarding President Lee’s visit to the Shanghai independence memorial, China emphasized that during World War II, when Japanese forces invaded China, Korean independence activists joined forces with the Chinese to repel them—again highlighting Japan’s historical wrongdoing.

When Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested in a parliamentary Q&A that Japan would not stand by if China used military force against Taiwan, China regarded this as a direct challenge to the “One China” principle and has since launched a barrage of harsh rhetoric. Then, on the second day of President Lee’s visit to China, Beijing played its worst card: suspending rare-earth exports to Japan.

By restricting rare-earth supplies to the United States, Xi effectively forced Trump into submission during tariff negotiations, and China had already used the same tactic against Japan in 2009. Now it has once again pulled out this infamous card.

That China swung the “rare-earth hammer” while President Lee was still on Chinese soil meeting top leaders could be interpreted as a warning: “Anyone who crosses me will face the same fate.”

Depending on one’s perspective, China may even have used the visiting foreign leader as a model case to send a global message: “Listen up—defy me and you’ll face a rare-earth ban, or worse.” Many Koreans would see this as China looking down on South Korea.

President Lee is soon set to travel to Japan for a Korea–Japan summit. But the spectacle of China bashing Prime Minister Takaichi while Lee was in China could put him in an awkward position. Was this an attempt to erect a barrier to prevent closer Korea–Japan relations?

#XiJinping #LeeJaeMyung #SouthKoreaChinaRelations