Reuters-China warns South Korea not to politicise economic issues
November 26, 2023 2 min 354 words
这则报道揭示了中韩外交互动的紧张背景。王毅外长在与韩外长会晤前敦促不将经济和科技议题政治化，突显中韩紧密的经济联系。中美矛盾引发的半导体争端成为焦点，韩国力图避免卷入中美之间。中国提议重新启动中韩日三方合作，显示其在地区外交中的意愿。尽管中美关系缓和，但中国仍对美与其地区盟友强化合作感到担忧。由于历史和贸易纷争，中日韩三方合作一度受阻，此次外长会议是两年来的首次。报道透露出地区动荡与各国外交努力的复杂纠葛，值得关注。
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned his South Korean counterpart on Sunday not to politicise economic and tech issues as the two prepared to meet Japan's top diplomat on the sidelines of a trilateral meeting aimed at boosting cooperation.
"China and South Korea have become cooperation partners with highly integrated interests and highly interconnected production and supply chains," Wang told South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, according to a Chinese foreign ministry readout.
"Both sides should jointly resist the tendency to politicise economic issues, instrumentalise science and tech issues, and the broad securitisation of trade issues."
South Korea has sought to avoid becoming embroiled in a tit-for-tat row between China and the United States over semiconductors.
The U.S. last month granted Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK Hynix (000660.KS) permission to supply U.S. chip equipment to their China factories indefinitely, ending a conundrum for the world's two largest memory chipmakers.
"China is willing to jointly promote the restart of revamped trilateral cooperation with South Korea and Japan," Wang said on Sunday.
While China and the United States have been mending frayed ties, including a summit this month between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, Beijing is concerned that Washington and its key regional allies are strengthening their three-way partnership.
Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul had agreed to hold summits every year starting in 2008 to bolster diplomatic and economic exchanges, but the plan has been blocked by bilateral rows and the COVID-19 pandemic. Their last trilateral leaders' meeting was in 2019.
The three foreign ministers are gathering in the port city of Busan, also the first such meeting since 2019. In September, senior officials from the three countries agreed to arrange a trilateral summit at the "earliest convenient time".
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida have taken steps to repair ties strained by history and trade feuds, and held a historic trilateral summit in August with Biden.