Chinese Premier Li Qiang has 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.
The Chinese premier met with 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 for the comprehensive resumption of cooperation between East Asia’s economic powerhouses, insisting that politics should be separated from economic and trade issues, calling for an end to protectionism and the decoupling of supply chains.
Regardless of agreements signed during the talks, the meeting itself is being seen as a mark of progress in relations between three countries whose relations are marked as much by suspicion and rancour as constructive engagement.
China and U.S.-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 cooperation with the United States on military and other measures.
