Already at the very beginning of the newly arrived year 2026, the leadership of the People’s Republic of China carried out several notable foreign policy activities, demonstrating that certain calendar dates do not justify “taking pauses” in behaving actively on the international stage.

The President of South Korea Visited the PRC, then Japan

Commenting on the state of trade and economic relations with the Republic of Korea as a whole, the Chinese newspaper Global Times applies the term “complementarity,” illustrating it with particular data from the outcomes of bilateral trade over the first 11 months of the previous year. Special attention is drawn to the fact that 67 percent of its total volume consists of machinery and electronics. Moreover, their share has been steadily increasing from year to year.

Successful cooperation between the PRC and the Republic of Korea in the field of advanced electronics inevitably touches upon pressing issues of international politics. Within this framework, Seoul finds itself in the position of a tightrope walker, moving quite successfully so far along a “tightly stretched rope” that connects three regional “centres of power” represented by Beijing, Washington, and Tokyo. As it was already outlined, the first out of the triangle is the most important trade and economic partner, while the second is a military and political ally whose concerns in the realms of intensifying competition in advanced electronics must be taken into account in one way or another.

As for the third “centre of power,” i.e., Japan, which President Lee visited just one week after his trip to the PRC, the visit to Tokyo attracted attention primarily for two reasons. First, it took place amidst sharp aggravation of Japanese–Chinese relations, and there are no signs of President Lee playing the role of a mediator aiming at resolving the tensions. On the contrary, this factor only complicated the negotiating process between the........

© New Eastern Outlook