Seoul and Tokyo, by contrast, denounced Pyongyang’s satellite launch plans, which violate UN sanctions and undermine the Korean peninsula’s stability. The diverging security visions confirmed the challenge of harmonising the trio’s regional priorities.
Despite such fissures, the summit sketched out blueprints for deeper cooperation. First, through more corporate engagement. Over 280 business officials and ministers convened a meeting on the summit sidelines, emerging with pledges to facilitate cross-border commercial ties and establish a permanent working group.
The joint leaders’ statement also welcomed the convening of the Trilateral Entrepreneurs Forum in 2024, organised by the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat, an international organisation established by the three governments in 2011.
03:10
Trade and Taiwan discussed at 3-way summit for Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders
Trade and Taiwan discussed at 3-way summit for Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders
Bringing business stakeholders into the process injects bottom-up perspectives focused more on shared economic interests than top-down wrangling over military tensions.
Tangible cooperation on such significant yet relatively apolitical issues could help restore perceptions of China as a trustworthy partner.
Such diplomatic heavy lifting is imperative after years of deteriorating regional trust. Only by first establishing basic habits of cooperation and the promised people-to-people ties can the more glamorous vision laid out at the summit – of the trilateral partners collectively engaging with other entities like Asean or Pacific Island nations – become plausible.
Third and most fundamental is the imperative of simply maintaining open channels for dialogue between Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo. Even when breakthroughs prove elusive, the mere act of talking prevents minor frictions from escalating needlessly.
02:26
South Korea-Japan trade war tensions flare
South Korea-Japan trade war tensions flare
Where deep-rooted distrust lurks, aggressive diplomacy – belligerent public statements and tit-for-tat – becomes the default mode in the absence of faces across a negotiating table. Keeping dialogue channels open prevents small disagreements over issues such as trade or military activities from escalating out of control.
Still, restarting a channel for dialogue itself lays a vital foundation. After nearly five years of suspended processes, the trilateral meeting’s greatest achievement was to reinstate a baseline commitment among rivals that diplomacy, economic interdependence and regional stability remain priorities over conflict.
Many obstacles remain in transitioning from a foundation of crisis management to collaboration between neighbours. De-escalating endemic tensions through dialogue is just the start. But by committing to keep conversing rather than retreating into a diplomatic deep freeze, China, South Korea and Japan have opened the door to a more constructive path, if their new dialogue process can be sustained. The talking has just restarted – now the real work begins.
Jinwan Park is a Washington-based foreign-policy researcher and an incoming Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University, China