China's premier hails 'new beginning' with US-allied South Korea, Japan

SEOUL — Chinese Premier Li Qiang praised what he called a restart in relations with Japan and South Korea as he met their leaders for the first three-way talks in four years on Monday (May 27), agreeing to revive trade and security dialogues hampered by global tensions.

The Chinese premier met South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Seoul with efforts to revitalise three-party free trade agreement negotiations, stalled since 2019, high on the agenda.

As the summit opened, Li said the meeting was "both a restart and a new beginning" and called for the comprehensive resumption of co-operation between East Asia's economic powerhouses.

But for this to happen politics should be separated from economic and trade issues, he added, calling for an end to protectionism and the decoupling of supply chains.

"For China, South Korea, and Japan, our close ties will not change, the spirit of co-operation achieved through crisis response will not change and our mission to safeguard regional peace and stability will not change," Li said.

The meeting itself was seen as a mark of progress for three countries whose relations are marked as much by suspicion and rancour as by constructive engagement.

"The trilateral summit is more about reducing frictions than reshaping geopolitics," said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

China and US-allied South Korea and Japan are trying to manage mutual distrust amid the rivalry between Beijing and Washington, tensions over democratically ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own, and North Korea's nuclear programme.

Yoon and Kishida have charted a closer course with each other and to Washington, embarking on unprecedented three-way