Chinese, South Korean, Japanese Foreign Ministers to Meet

The foreign ministers of South Korea, China and Japan are set to meet in Busan, South Korea, on Sunday, the first trilateral foreign ministerial meeting since August 2019. The foreign ministers of the three countries may hold bilateral talks between China and Japan and China and South Korea during the meeting. According to previous reports by Kyodo News, this foreign ministers' meeting was proposed by South Korea, indicating South Korea's willingness to improve South Korea-China relations. Although the two governments later avoided over-interpreting the situation, the Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo quoted an anonymous senior official in the South Korean presidential office saying, "The meeting itself has symbolic significance. China talked with Japan but not us, which is indeed not a good situation." Mao said in the regular press briefing on Monday, "We don't need to be told what to do or not to do. The Taiwan question is entirely China's internal affairs and brooks no foreign interference. On the South China Sea, China and ASEAN countries have the ability, confidence and wisdom to handle this issue well. The ROK is not a party to the South China Sea issue, and there's no point in getting involved." Jae-hung Chung, director of the Center for China Studies at the Sejong Institute, said in a phone interview with VOA that there are many problems between South Korea and China, including deep strategic distrust, China's dissatisfaction with the security cooperation between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan, and the differences the two countries have about Taiwan, the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula. On these issues, South Korea has nothing to help China, and China believes that South Korea has kept pace with the U.S. "Fundamentally speaking," Moon said, "As long as the current cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan continues, there will be limits to the improvement of China's relations with South Korea and Japan."