Smiles all around at South Korea-China summit

While the world’s eyes were on Venezuela, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung traveled to Beijing to open a new era of cooperation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Lee also reiterated South Korea’s commitment to the One China policy.

Lee led a delegation that included about 200 economic officials and representatives of South Korean business, including Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun, and LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo.

The two presidents held a summit meeting on Monday, December 5, which resulted in 14 memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and one certificate of cultural asset donation. The South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo lamented the fact that that they issued no joint statement. But the videos of Lee and Xi shaking hands and smiling, along with Lee taking selfies of the two of them and their wives, probably said more than any formal document could.

The government-to-government MOUs cover the establishment of regular meetings between South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources and China’s Ministry of Commerce; cooperation in industrial production and supply chains; promotion of venture businesses, innovation and digital technology; environmental protection; food safety; and protection of intellectual property rights.

The certificate of donation states that a pair of stone lion statues dating from the Qing Dynasty will be transferred from the Kansong Art Museum in Seoul to the Chinese National Cultural Heritage Administration. The statues were purchased at an auction in Japan in 1933 by the famous Korean collector Jeon Hyeong-pil (known by his pen name, Gansong), who is reported to have said, “The stone lions are Chinese relics, so it would be good to send them back to their homeland someday.”

Nine more MOUs were signed between South Korean and Chinese companies during a Korea-China business forum held in parallel with the summit. These included an agreement between Shinsegae Group and Alibaba to expand exports of Korean consumer goods to China and similar arrangements covering food products, cosmetics and bio-health products; joint development and distribution of cultural content, including K-Pop, TV shows and movies, and computer games; joint development of autonomous driving technology; and joint production of materials used in power generation and water treatment.​

In his opening remarks, Lee said:

This summit will serve as an important turning point in making 2026 the inaugural year of the full restoration of Korea-China relations. I am confident that our efforts to develop the strategic cooperative partnership between our two countries into an irreversible trend of the times will continue unwaveringly.

As President Xi knows well, the roots of Korea-China relations run very deep. For thousands of years, our two nations have maintained friendly relations as neighbors. During periods when sovereignty was lost, we stood together and fought side by side to restore it. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties, we have developed an inseparable, mutually beneficial partnership.

Based on mutual trust between President Xi and myself, I will work to firmly strengthen favorable public sentiment between our two countries, which serves as the political foundation of Korea-China relations.

The contrast with the acrimony between Japan and China triggered by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks about how Japanese military might get involved in a fight over Taiwan could not have been greater.

It might take quite a lot of work to strengthen South Korean public sentiment toward China, which has recently been quite negative. A poll conducted in June 2025 by the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper and the East Asia Institute showed that 66.3% of respondents had an unfavorable view of China, up from 63.8% in August 2024. In comparison, a poll published by the Pew Research Center in the same month showed 61% of South Korean respondents having a favorable view of the US.

But that was before President Trump suggested in August that the US should own the land under its military bases in South Korea, the use of which is granted (not leased) under the Status of Forces Agreement between the two countries; and before ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arrested Korean workers without proper visas at a Hyundai Motor facility in Georgia at gunpoint and put them in chains in September.

In addition, there are US tariffs on imports of Korean goods and forced investment in the US, which reduce growth prospects within Korea. According to the Bank of Korea, the nation’s GDP rose at annual rate of only 1.8% in the third quarter of 2025, and that was the highest rate in more than a year.

President Lee emphasized the need to boost growth in his interview with the Chinese press, stating that:

At present, South Korean society faces a number of challenges, the most severe of which is economic polarization… inequality is becoming normalized… While there are multiple contributing factors, the core problem lies in a shortage of opportunities caused by stagnant economic growth. Therefore, I believe that to minimize social conflicts and restore hope for the public.… We must ultimately promote economic growth.

South Korea and China share very close economic and trade ties, with many factors that are highly beneficial to each other’s economic development.… I believe the top priority is to build new, equal cooperative relationships – particularly in technology-intensive fields such as artificial intelligence and high-tech industries – to create a cooperation-oriented economic partnership that benefits both sides.

Japanese government policy, on the other hand, has provoked China and triggered economic retaliation that so far includes a drastic reduction in the number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan, the reimposition of restrictions on the import of Japanese seafood that had only recently been lifted, the cancellation of Japanese music performances in China, an investigation into alleged dumping of Japanese chemicals used in the semiconductor industry; and a ban on exports to Japan of dual-use (military and civilian) products, including rare earth metals.

Furthermore, to add insult to injury, China is planning to lease additional pandas to South Korea while the last two pandas in Japan are scheduled to return to China at the end of January. When South Korean Minister of Environment Kim Sung-whan met with Liu Guohong, director of China’s National Forestry and Grassland Administration, at the summit meeting in Beijing, “they reflected on the achievements of the two countries’ panda cooperation and agreed to deepen cooperation in the future.”

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