How China Doubled Down on the Polarization of Northeast Asia

On April 25, 2024, Xi Jinping gave Secretary of State Blinken a choice between stability and a downward spiral in the Sino-US relationship. China’s call for “stability” came with unmistakable overtones. It meant partnering on China’s terms. As Foreign Secretary Wang Yi made clear to Tony Blinken, “the negative factors in the relationship are still increasing and building, and the relationship is facing all kinds of disruptions. China’s reasonable development rights have been unreasonably suppressed and our core interests are facing challenges.” Wang warned against “engaging in rivalry and confrontation and even sliding toward conflict.”¹ Spelling out the stark choice, Xi Jinping held out hope for a partnership while warning of rising prospects of “conflict.”

It was Blinken who clearly identified a pathway to stability, while Chinese only hinted at what they required to get “stability.” Cutting support for Russia’s defense industry would avoid sanctions on the way for Chinese companies while contributing to the end of the war launched by Russia. Finding common ground on dual-use, high tech products would limit trade frictions allowing overall trade tensions to be managed. Refraining from coercion in the South China Sea, e.g., against the Philippines, would reduce tensions that could result in armed conflict. None of those steps corresponded to China’s interpretation of stability. Rather, Xi appeared to be set on reviving in a much more assertive manner his previous demand for a G2, leaving Asia to China. 

On May 13, 2024, when Wang Yi met the South Korean foreign minister, he said that the two countries should seek “stable” ties despite their recent difficulties.² Then, on May 20, 2024, Lai Ching-te’s inauguration as president of Taiwan saw China’s focus turn to Japan. Ambassador to Japan Wu Jianghao threatened, "Once the country of Japan is tied to the tanks plotting to split China, the Japanese people will be brought into the fire."³ On this occasion, it was Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa responding that stability means refraining from coercion.

On May 27, 2024, Premier Li Qiang at the trilateral CJK summit insisted that politics must be separated from economics, coupled with an end to supply chain decoupling. He added, "For China, South Korea, and Japan, our close ties will not change, the spirit of cooperation achieved through crisis response will not change and our mission to safeguard regional peace and stability will not change."⁴ Again, the word “stability” defies how others see it, while Li leaves no place for economic security or cooperation to address security crises.

On May 16, 2024, the joint statement of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin on "the deepening of the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation entering a new era,” accused the United States of attempting to “disrupt the strategic security balance.”⁵ Blaming Washington for the destabilizing currents in Europe and Asia, Xi locked arms with the world’s foremost aggressor as he differentiated what Beijing has come to regard as stabilizing and destabilizing behavior.

After NATO labeled China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Beijing accused it on July 11, 2024, of bringing the same “chaos” to Asia as it had to Europe, denouncing its closer ties to Asian states,⁶ notably Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. Such thinking has increasingly been aired since 2021 in Chinese narratives, especially those on most sensitive Northeast Asia. 

In the period 2021-2024, Chinese confidence reached unprecedented levels, showcased in the rapid succession of programs launched by General Secretary Xi Jinping to reshape the world as well as the regional order. Building on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) introduced in 2013, Xi proposed in rapid succession the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilizational Initiative. Each represented an unmistakable challenge to the US-led, liberal international order, opposing the “undemocratic” economic order, alliance-oriented security order, and intrusive values demands defined by Beijing as the unjust status quo. On the surface, these initiatives defended sovereignty, above all, but they embodied Sinocentric goals resistant to balancing or criticizing China, e.g., in China’s immediate backyard of Northeast Asia. The warnings about “stability” in 2024 conveyed the essence of China’s newly aroused thinking.

By 2024, Northeast Asia was polarized to a degree unseen since the Sino-Soviet alliance of the 1950s, an outcome China blamed on the US “Cold War mentality.” China protested that it only pursued regional integration, while driving polarization. Its strategy consisted of four maneuvers: (1) splitting others—all versus the United States, and Russia and South Korea versus Japan; (2) isolating Northeast Asia from the rest of the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan, and from Europe; (3) solidifying China’s hold over Russia as well as its unique leverage over North Korea; and (4) concealing Sinocentrism but championing national identity divides that left room for it, even as the overall national identity approach was faltering. If splitting others and isolating Northeast Asia were failing, China had more success in solidifying control in the region’s northern frontier. Together, its maneuvers—counterproductive or successful—led to deeper polarization.

Justifying Russia’s full-scale war in Europe as a result of US policies and blocking new UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea on the pretext that Pyongyang is driven to missile tests by Washington’s hostile policy, China took unprecedented steps in support of polarization in Northeast Asia in the first part of the 2020s. Castigating Joe Biden for the new “Cold War” atmosphere, Xi rejected US efforts to establish guard rails to manage competition without veering toward confrontation. Having lost hope in driving a wedge between the US and its allies in Japan and South Korea, China upped the pressure on the two, further reflecting its shift toward polarization despite economic urgency belying that path. Yet, the urgency of economic problems led to some softening of China’s posture by 2024, consistent with plans to flood markets with industrial products, requiring more customers in the United States, Japan, and South Korea. If polarization only partially served Sinocentrism, an economic pathway was a longshot to success.

Chronological Overview

Looking back to the start of the Biden administration, scant reason for optimism could be found in Chinese policies or expectations. Chinese were already convinced that the downward spiral in bilateral relations would intensify. No potential pullbacks from Trump’s thinking on China could satisfy Chinese demands. This reasoning rested on at least three assumptions: (1) confidence newly enhanced by disparate responses to the pandemic that China was on an inexorable rise and the US in deepening decline; (2) insistence that US intentions in the region could not be reconciled with China’s bottom line; and (3) alarm that US allies and partners would be tempted to join a US strategy versus China. In Northeast Asia, Japan appeared poised to firmly back the US, even as it remained hesitant to take decisive economic measures. When over the next years South Korea aligned more closely with the US strategy, China only doubled down on its agenda.

Debate continued into 2021 on whether China should confidently challenge the US or needed to hold back because of relative weakness. Shi Yinhong accepted a division into two camps, which China could manage because the shift in the balance of power had accelerated abruptly, which had created unprecedented opportunities to act in the military, economic, diplomatic, and ideological spheres.⁷ In contrast, Fu Mengzi was more skeptical about the decline of the US in the short run and said it was too soon to talk of “two superpowers and many strong powers,” warning that factors underlying hegemonic US power are still in place.⁸ China’s comprehensive power (economic, science and technology, and military) may not catch up to that of the United States until about 2050, warned Fu. Even as the world is shifting toward a bipolar system, this must not be rushed. As Sino-US relations deteriorated, the balance tilted decisively toward Shi’s outlook on two, conflicting camps.

The impact of the pandemic intensified in 2021. It accelerated geopolitical divisions, especially a further deterioration in Sino-US relations, without altering them in any substantial manner. Already in a “wolf warrior” mode, China’s tone grew more belligerent. Yun Sun described the pandemic as a “watershed event” for China, reshaping the power equilibrium, arguing “It exacerbated and expedited the deterioration of US-China relations, to the extent of a ‘freefall.’”⁹ More confident that changes unseen in a century were under way with China gaining and the US losing, China expected an irreversible US decline. In 2021 the national identity gap intensified, as Xi unleashed barrages of contrasts,¹⁰ the focus on supply chains intensified, and what in 2019 had remained mostly confined to the troubles plaguing Sino-US relations spread to both Sino-Japanese and Sino-ROK relations.

The Biden administration solidified the US alliance network in Northeast Asia beginning in 2021. This grew easier by the time Prime Minister Kishida Fumio took office in the fall of 2021 with the breakdown of Japan’s planning for a summit with Xi Jinping, followed by Kishida’s response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, ending Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s outreach to Putin. The impact of the pandemic put the focus on the security of supply chains, and the Ukraine war showcased economic security concerns. In the years 2022 to 2024, Chinese thinking was fixated on the new struggle over economic security, acutely aware of President Joe Biden’s success in rallying allies and partners, prioritizing in China policy a range of unprecedented security issues.

Over the course of 2021, Chinese alarm grew over US economic policy, including appeals reaching Japan and South Korea, as globalization became imperiled. Authors accused the US of launching a technology war, broader than President Donald Trump’s trade war and more driven by political and security goals.¹¹ Chinese had awakened to a coordinated US strategy joining technology, security, and values. More concerned about US pushback than at any time since the early 1990s, China hardened its thinking. It could have sought to reset bilateral relations with a US administration eager to pursue shared objectives from climate change to management of North Korea, but Xi’s timetable did not leave room for such upbeat diplomacy. The pivotal year 2021 paved the way to the sharp downturn in 2022. China showed a preference for confrontation, not coexistence with compromise.

Chinese deflected blame for arousing tensions by insisting that Biden, no less than Trump, was taking a confrontational approach, unwilling to accept US decline as China kept rising. The US had launched a “Cold War-like competition and undermined globalization and the international order.” Under Biden, Wu Shinbo argued, competition would center on technology, values or human rights, and the US military presence and the Quad as well as other multilateral mechanisms. Stability will depend not on finding common goals but on the US accepting changes to the global order due to China’s rise.¹² In Northeast Asia, it followed, Washington had to accept a new regional order in its approach to North Korea, to US alliances, and to China as well as to Sino-Russian challenges to the status quo.

A Russian article captured the essence of China’s more aggressive thinking, blaming it on the US shift to containment policies marked by a full-fledged economic war and Biden pressuring allies to join an anti-China platform. The hardening Chinese approach meant increasingly widespread use of economic pressure on those seen as pursuing a hostile policy, “wolf warrior” foreign policy rhetoric radicalized with an obsessive demonstration of China’s successes and the advantages of the Chinese political system led by the CCP, India-China border clashes in June 2020 leading to an apparent drift of India towards partnership with the US, and responses to US events of late 2020 and early 2021—destructive to the prestige of the United States, contributing to the consolidation of the trend towards more aggressive international behavior from China.¹³ If Central Asian moves were not as welcome, Russian analysts were eager to register their all-out embrace of China’s hostility to Biden.

The year 2021 proved decisive due to Chinese perceptions of the effectiveness of new US policy and its determination to fight back, not to accept the results. At year’s end Ling Shengli and Luo Jingyu wrote of the Biden administration’s “technology alliance,” aiming to maintain US hegemony and designed to achieve “technological containment” of China, focusing especially on strengthening technological cooperation with Japan and South Korea.¹⁴ By mid-2022, China’s alarm over US regional policy had grown, as had its determination to resist more assertively. One article insisted that until 2020 regional cooperation had been proceeding well, as in the CJK economic framework, before Biden’s “decoupling” policy emerged. Supply chains aimed at “leaving China” had moved forward, as did pressure to get Tokyo and Seoul to join this cause.¹⁵ Biden’s multilateralism hit home.

If Chinese perceived a fundamental shift in dynamics in 2021, they were tested more decisively in the following year. The launch of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine in February put Beijing on the spot: either distance itself from Moscow in defense of the basic principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity or face guilt by association in the form of growing alarm that a similar scenario of coercion awaits because of China’s designs in Taiwan. Xi had started 2021 on the wrong track to explore common ground with Biden, but the situation was not irreversible given thinking in the Biden administration and in US allies, both in Europe and Asia. As leaders sought China’s help in the biggest crisis the world had seen since the end of the Cold War, Xi doubled down on a quasi-alliance with Putin and on rejection of the emerging US Indo-Pacific strategy. It was precisely in the first half of 2022 that the lines of polarization hardened beyond recovery. Claiming neutrality, China made sure to echo Russian charges, bolster its economy, and supply its military industries.

If Beijing had responded differently to Russian aggression, diplomacy in East Asia could have followed a different track. Kishida and incoming South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol would have eagerly encouraged Xi to meet, while North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would have been left in a bind unlikely to draw close to Putin against China’s will. Biden presumably would have recalibrated his regional policy to seek more common ground with Xi Jinping. Instead, “Indo-Pacific” gained new credence as the symbol of regional architecture exclusive of China and the target of angry accusations of “NATO of the East.” Kishida fully embraced the US agenda, and Yoon abandoned strategic ambiguity in its favor. China’s hostility to the budding regional alignment only accelerated its institutionalization. The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics set the tone for aroused nationalism. Leaders of the US and its allies did not attend, and Putin became the principal guest, agreeing to a “no limits” partnership on the eve of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Instead of seeking accommodation with Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy and recognizing its clear difference from Trump’s orientation with possible room for compromise, Chinese demonized it as more negative due to alliance-building and the comprehensive range of issues. They rightly recognized that the fallout of the Russo-Ukraine war would exacerbate regional tensions, but censorship prevented exploration of what China could do to ameliorate the impact. Simplistic talk that Washington would welcome the opportunity to deepen containment of China left no room to explore how China could alter this dynamic. As the assessment of the regional environment grew more dire throughout the spring of 2022, Chinese strategic thinking just kept narrowing.¹⁶

What is strikingly different in the years from 2021 is the message from Chinese sources that the US had gone on the offensive unprovoked and China could no longer gain leverage with Tokyo or Seoul. Mini-lateral groupings, including US-Japan-ROK trilateralism, the Indo-Pacific framework in its various manifestations, the focus on economic security, and Biden’s ideological language (seen as more threatening than Trump’s raw anti-communism) all appeared more dangerous.¹⁷ At the core of Chinese concern was an accelerated timetable for progress toward the recovery of Taiwan. Weakness toward Russia’s war threatened to reverberate in attitudes that China was not serious about applying military pressure in its own reunification mission. Similarly, North Korea had come to be viewed as a test for keeping the West at bay. New urgency over these battlegrounds made it difficult to distance China from Russia, which, in turn, exacerbated the tensions over both Taiwan and North Korea. The downward spiral accelerated throughout the fateful year of 2022.

In late 2022, one article urged Biden to discard the “Indo-Pacific” and reembrace the “Asia-Pacific” concept since that conveys more connotations of economic cooperation, while Indo-Pacific is more geopolitical with alliances as the focus. Obama’s “rebalance to the Asia-Pacific” and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) appeared constructive, the article adds, contradicting long-expressed views in China. The use of “free and open” with Indo-Pacific, it said, shows that the term is about Quad security talks, military exercises, and relations with China. It is nakedly confrontational, fragmenting the region with an anti-China alliance, rejected by most states. The piece urges the US to abandon a failed strategy,¹⁸ as if “Indo-Pacific” connotes containment, not countering China’s own behavior.

In 2023, I wrote, “Chinese analysis of Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy reveals thinking about China’s own strategy. Biden is accused of interfering with the ‘integration’ and ‘unification’ of the region and China’s pursuit of a ‘common destiny.’ It is fragmenting the region, stirring up anxiety about a ‘China threat.’ Chinese perceptions of Biden’s ‘comprehensive strategy’ embodied in the Indo-Pacific concept are zero-sum, more than Japan’s prior advocacy of the FOIP. Now the strategy covers security, economics, technology, and ideological stressing shared values of ‘freedom’ and ‘openness.’ The core is maritime security, next is the values framework, third is economic and technological competition, and fourth is a network of multilateral mechanisms… Opposed to decoupling in advanced technology, Xi appealed to countries to not harmonize policies with the US and to keep supply chains open. At the APEC summit he called what the US was doing a blow to international supply networks. Xi especially revealed a growing sense of crisis over tightened restrictions on semiconductors.”¹⁹ By 2023, new Chinese documents—the Concept Paper on the Global Security Initiative (GSI) and PRC Position on a Political Solution to the Ukraine Crisis—would formalize the assertive response to the Biden agenda. The documents blame “Cold War mentality” for US measures, insisting that without intervention from afar the natural order in the region would proceed.²⁰ Sanctions and supply chain security are treated as distorting free economic exchange, and the US is accused of demonizing China, not, to the slightest degree, the other way around.

What stands out in this period is the sense that Japan and South Korea were slipping out of the reach of China after years of insistence that they would keep their distance from the United States. Both had been awaiting summit visits from Xi Jinping. Economic ties with China were considered strong enough to limit their security dependence on the US. Their tensions with Washington had received welcoming scrutiny as recently as 2020. The loss of South Korea stung more since it was assumed to be balancing ties to the two great powers, although Moon Jae-in had already begun to tilt further to the US even before a conservative replaced him. Suddenly, the line between security and economics was being blurred by the US focus on economic security. Publications in China found it hard to explain why Tokyo and Seoul had changed course, but they could not avoid acknowledging this in a critical transitional period, qualifying their arguments by saying that the shift would prove to be limited, especially in Seoul, due to lingering, restraining factors. As China’s economy slumped, the focus turned to ways all benefit by keeping undivided attention on more economic integration.

As the US-Japan-ROK triangle tightened in 2023, Li Nan argued that the United States and its East Asian allies have only strengthened their Cold War mindset since it ended, developing an unsuccessful strategy to deter North Korea. The result has been North Korean nuclearization and under Yoon Suk-yeol, alignment with the US Indo-Pacific Strategy and support for the rules-based international order promoted by the United States, including greater coordination with NATO and the Quad and emphasis on economic security. Li views each of these measures as directed at, and negatively impacting, China.²¹ Seoul was joining the US “camp” against China and North Korea. When Chinese feign that Washington rather than Beijing holds a bipolar view of the Indo-Pacific, this analysis proves otherwise. Li further insists that Seoul’s new aggressive stance, including statements on Taiwan and the South China Sea (not seen as defensive in response to Chinese moves but as unprovoked) serve US interests, more than ROK ones, and signify containing China. However, this faces headwinds, readers are told: the US will fail to moderate between its allies when history and other tensions arise, cannot overcome their different threat perceptions and shared anti-US protectionist attitudes, or contain domestic political forces. US-Japan-ROK trilateralism, not North Korea’s behavior, and clashing North-South responses to the Ukraine “crisis” not Russia’s invasion and China’s support for it, have harmed peace and stability in Northeast Asia, concludes Li Nan’s analysis of the overall situation in the Northeast Asian region.

On what basis is a degree of optimism aired? National identity arguments supplant security ones: the US is too ideological to be trusted by others; Japan’s quest for autonomy in Asia is too entrenched for it to follow the US closely; South Koreans are too divided over identity to swing sharply to the US side²²; India’s “strategic autonomy” promises to keep the US at bay. There is mention of national economic interests that favor China over the United States. Key to optimism is the argument that states do not want to damage economic ties to China due to security and that linkages between mini-lateral entities remain in doubt: ASEAN states cannot accept a weakening of ASEAN centrality or opposition to China, Quad Plus expansion is unlikely, and states do not want to be dragged into great power competition.²³ Yet, such strands of optimism were generally muted in the trying circumstances China was increasingly facing in the early 2020s.

Xi Jinping faced further setbacks in 2023 as relations with the Biden administration remained in the doldrums. After a tense November 2022 summit with Biden in the shadow of the Bali G20 meeting, it took a year of uncertain diplomatic encounters to even achieve a repeat summit at the APEC gathering in San Francisco with scant results. Claims to a “strategic success” rested on a G2 image of two paramount leaders above all others on the world stage and on the hope that a pretense of reduced tensions would lower the guard of US allies and partners. Conveying a more upbeat message bought time for Chinese diplomacy to reboot. Throwing a bone to the US side with resumed military talks came at little cost, while dining with the US business elite was useful.

In 2024, China defied concerns in other states that it was trying to export its way out of economic troubles and to take advantage of Russian and North Korean belligerence for its own security aims. It held out hope for a surge in economic integration through CJK diplomacy. Beijing seemed to seek atmospherics without yielding on matters of substance. Yet, stark warnings by spokespersons in the spring left no doubt of a looming “downward spiral.” Whether Tokyo or Seoul could, to a degree, defy Biden for economic reasons was apparently still up for debate.²⁴

Chinese acknowledge a worse security environment in the Indo-Pacific than a few years earlier, but they hesitate to draw a linkage with the Ukraine war or fully credit the Biden administration’s push-back strategy. They cannot fault Chinese policy for any negative outcome. In addition, they are obliged to obfuscate China’s strategy, feigning the absence of an agenda to transform the region apart from encouraging trade, opposing alliances, and seeking only positive relations based on mutual respect and acceptance of China’s core interests. The things that matter most for deciphering China’s regional strategy are left unclear in its writings. Yet, we can piece together an underlying strategy, focusing separately on thinking about each state active in Northeast Asia.

Chinese Strategic Thinking toward Russia, 2021-2024

Chinese perceived a fundamental transformation in Russian thinking about the United States well before the Ukraine war in 2022. If some ambiguity persisted during the Trump era, Biden’s election solidified thinking that Russia not only sees Washington and Moscow as irreconcilable enemies, but it regards Washington and Beijing likewise as “total antagonists” with a broader range of discord extending beyond geopolitics to global economic development and ideology. Recognizing that Russia had been awaiting a downturn in Sino-US relations as a golden strategic opportunity, Chinese debated how much to encourage it in forging a bloc or to be wary of that when most countries remained hesitant to enter either a Chinese-led or a US-led bloc.²⁵  

Given the border closings in the pandemic (but not to trade), momentum from the June 2019 Sino-Russian declaration of a new epoch in their relationship, including integrationist measures, was uncertain. Russians appeared focused on winning Chinese approval for building a Greater Eurasian Partnership, inclusive of the BRI, but China’s “Zero-COVID” obsession left little room to explore such initiatives. Chinese showed little wariness toward the upsurge in Russian confidence that the world had entered a new cold war with China no longer afraid of the US and much bolder on the ideological front against the “onslaught to the East” of the collective West. Optimism in Russia was growing that China was pushing back against US pressure, and it needs Russia more, even to the point of approving an alliance, if not employing that term. As Chinese infused bilateral documents with terms such as “community of common destiny” and a “new era of Russian-Chinese relations,” they gave Russians ample reason to believe—even before the February 2022 Putin-Xi statement to that effect—that there was no upper limit to relations. The message delivered from China to Russia conveyed support for polarization centered on clashing concepts of international order based on opposed values.²⁶ While Chinese and Russian sources did not indicate that China gave a green light to Russia to launch its full-scale war in Ukraine, the tone of relations by the start of 2022 had at least encouraged Russian leaders to expect overall support.

As Russia prepared to launch the full war, it took heart from Wang Yi’s statement in March 2021: “In a strong tandem, China and Russia play a stabilizing role in ensuring peace and stability throughout the world. The more turbulence and upheaval in the world, the more important it is to move China-Russia cooperation forward. China and Russia, as a strategic pillar for each other, mutually provide opportunities for development and act as real partners on pressing issues on the world agenda… This year marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty on Good Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation between China and Russia. My Russian friends and I agreed to extend the Treaty and fill it with new content. This will be another historic milestone and a new start for Sino-Russian relations." Talk of a "Russian-Chinese tandem" was seen in Russia as meaning that China has joined Russia in abandoning hope in constructive relations with the West. In June 2019, the addition of the “new era” to the established formula of “strategic partnership” had been viewed as a prelude to a “great leap forward” in formalization of military-political relations, acclaimed by Iury Tavrovsky.²⁷

The increasingly asymmetric Sino-Russian relationship gave Beijing an opening to push for greater advantage, as in Central Asia, while paying lip service to bonhomie on an unprecedented scale. The cat-and-mouse game on regional issues since 2013 had left Russia on the defensive, with little recourse from 2022 to resist a Sinocentric agenda.²⁸ Chinese had blamed all Russian warnings that China was taking advantage of an unequal relations on paranoia. Denying any ill intent, they were heartened by Russian narratives in the new wartime era that clearly embraced China more fully.²⁹

In 2023, Chinese strategic thinking toward Russia was heartened by the growing asymmetry in bilateral relations as trade leaped forward with Russia cut off from other imports of cars and electronics and exports of energy to Europe. China’s failure to finalize plans for a new natural gas pipeline showed Russia’s limited economic leverage. Yet no less important was the consensus on ideology (obscuring it with insistence that they were merely acting as realist powers in the face of the ideologically-driven, “Cold War mentality” of the United States) and the loaded phrase “legitimate security interests,” supportive of values-based, spheres of influence for both states. ³⁰

Russia’s role in furthering polarization in Northeast Asia posed little problem for China. That Tokyo and Seoul imposed stringent sanctions on Russia, eliciting rancor as “unfriendly countries,” made Moscow more dependent on Beijing. The upsurge in Russian military ties to North Korea in 2023 raised regional tensions and may have aroused a degree of angst in China, but deepening bipolarity was a lesser concern. Rather, Chinese piled on in blaming the two US allies for their reactions to the Russo-Ukraine war and to North Korea’s provocative behavior abetted by Russia. If Russian technological support for North Korean weaponry was now an issue, China kept its response quiet.

Tracing Russia’s increasing rejection of the post-Cold War international system, Zhang Hong finds it a natural progression for a significant military power and influential civilization,³¹ against the oddity of just following that system through 1995, while seeking to be treated as an equal member. More reasonable to 2011 was to cooperate some under the Western-led international order while being less willing to quietly follow along. Between 2012 and 2014, Russia became an assertive shaper of the system on behalf of multipolarity, believing that Western power was in decline and power was shifting toward the East amid fundamental conflicts over values, security, and regional economic integration. From 2014, Russia has challenged the “Western international system.” This chronology of how Russia was forced to leave the Western-led order—concerned about US alliances representing neo-colonialism, expansionism, hegemony, and unilateralism—despite seeking cooperative relations, has direct parallels to China. Ukraine is treated, much as parts of East Asia, as part of a great power’s historic sphere, to which Russia’s realist policy applied force as a permissible way to achieve national objectives even if it violated the existing world order, especially after the West “overthrew” the sitting Ukrainian leader. Seeing itself as a great power and considering Ukraine a core interest, a more confident Russia finally responded to becoming marginalized and not being accepted as an “equal partner” in the Western-led order. Ukraine has no voice in this analysis, which only recognizes the rights of great powers. Yet, Zhang faults not only the West for not recognizing its diminished capabilities but Russia for underestimating the existing world order, as if it had acted prematurely, unlike China’s timing.

In 2024, the debate on Russia continued, allowing for an unusual degree of diversity, if limited to academic publications unlikely to impact popular and mainstream worldviews. The official line was not uniformly echoed. The outcome of the war, the impact on China’s ties to countries opposed to Russia, the desirability of hitching China’s wagon closely to Russia were among the themes discussed.³² Yet, tolerance for some debate did not mean that closeness to Putin was in doubt. China was prepared to pay a considerable price to sustain its most comradely relationship.

Chinese Strategic Thinking toward the Korean Peninsula, 2021-2024

The 2020 pandemic brought a verbal barrage against Seoul as well as Washington. ROK cooperation with the Biden administration in 2021, accelerating in 2022 over the impact of the Ukraine war and in 2023 with a new Indo-Pacific strategy, led to demonizing it further. Given this record, it is reasonable to conclude that instead of some specific downturn, we are observing the disclosure in stages of a mindset that existed from the outset of the Xi Jinping era, if not earlier.

On the eve of Biden’s election, China eyed ways to solidify economic ties with South Korea as well as Japan. Building on RCEP though a three-way FTA or getting Moon to link his “New Southern Policy” to China’s BRI were possibilities. Capitalizing on outrage over Trump’s one-sided pressure raised hope that defense of economic interests would lead to new ties to China. In 2020, warnings of losses from defying China, such as from cuts in the massive flow of Chinese tourists, lost their impact due to pandemic border closures, but lingering concern still could be utilized by Beijing.³³

As Biden took office, China issued warnings to South Korea that it must keep a “balance” between its ally and main trading partner, stay aloof from the US “Indo-Pacific strategy” in all its dimensions, and prioritize unfettered economic ties over economic security. Having been disturbed by signs of South Korean alienation from China in the opening phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, some Chinese warned Seoul that it stood at a crossroads in its foreign policy with implied threats that the wrong choices would result in retaliation.³⁴ “Smile diplomacy” did not hide “wolf warrior” teeth.³⁵

Possible backtracking on Moon’s soft posture toward North Korea under US pressure also drew Chinese warnings. After Biden’s election, Cheng Xiaohe noted China’s newfound insistence that the US engage the North by consulting with China and accepting a regional security framework rather than demanding denuclearization as an early goal. He cited Xi Jinping’s “Four Firm Supports” (the DPRK’s socialist enterprise, implementation of its new strategic line, a political solution to solving the nuclear issue, and lasting peace and security on the peninsula), which strongly backed Kim Jong-un, calling for dialogue to satisfy him and a security framework for the peninsula. Cheng added, “Whether Washington and Beijing cooperate under the Biden administration depends heavily on whether they reach an understanding on how to approach the DPRK. This was a touchstone for prospects of cooperation under George W. Bush and Barack Obama as well as during the first year of the Trump administration.”³⁶ China had upped the ante on Korea even before Trump left office.

Seoul’s stance mattered too for how Beijing would deal with it, as affirmed at the end of 2020 in an article about Moon Jae-in’s dual-track approach to achieve denuclearization and unification and to strengthen the alliance with the US to deal with the nuclear threat. Calling this contradictory, the authors argued mixing geopolitics, domestic politics, and unification goals posed a great dilemma, the only way out of which is to end the ROK–US alliance and forge a permanent mechanism of peaceful coexistence on the peninsula. Moon must choose autonomy over alliance, accept the North’s obsession with self-determination over Seoul-led unification, and prioritize a lasting peace structure over denuclearization. As an ally of the US, Seoul must recognize the great power impact of peninsular policies, as proven in the THAAD example. Moon’s approach would inflict great harm if it undercut Kim Jong-un’s strategic self-sufficiency and defense principles, the article insists.³⁷ Thus, Moon must realize that the US Indo–Pacific strategy prioritizes strategic competition, which seeks to use North–South divisions to enforce the US military presence, to maintain control over South Korea, and to sustain the North Korea–Japan confrontation, which further justifies the US military role in the region. The article makes no demands on Pyongyang, implying that only by separating Seoul from the alliance framework—in the Indo–Pacific, Japan, and the peninsula—will China be satisfied.

This article reinforces Cheng Xiaohe’s argument that Sino–DPRK relations are more normalized than ever before and that improved Sino–ROK relations under Moon depend on how he engages the North and resists US efforts to pressure the North or contain China. Meanwhile, despite the severe breakdown in Sino–South Korean ties provoked by THAAD, China and South Korea had found a way to go forward. Visits by Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi to South Korea in the second half of 2020 made clear that both “docking development strategies” and a 2+2 dialogue on diplomacy and security, with major implications for North Korean ties, would test Seoul’s ongoing relations with Beijing.³⁸

Already, prior to either the Biden or Yoon eras, Xi Jinping’s geopolitical framework for Northeast Asia had shifted to intensifying pressure on South Korea (despite the fragile December 2017 deal with Moon Jae-in) and openly treating North Korea as a buffer zone, a socialist brother, a balance of power key, and a border area vital to Northeast China. Considering Beijing and Seoul at odds in their aims for Pyongyang, Xi had put the burden on Seoul to prevent a new cold war.³⁹ One Korean writer, Woo Jung Yeop, took a sober look at geopolitics, saying that “the South Korean public’s view of China has significantly deteriorated… and China has intensified its pressure tactics against South Korea… There has been no shortage of Chinese warnings about possible retaliation if Seoul were to cross one or more of a myriad of putative red lines… The overall theme is that tilting to the United States on security or technology related to security is unacceptable… China’s demands have intensified so, what was tolerated some years ago is no longer acceptable.”⁴⁰

In 2021, Yun Sun made clear that if the pandemic was not a geopolitical gamechanger for China, it was at least perceived as punctuating a decisive transformation. She wrote, “In the Chinese strategic community, the pandemic has been regarded as a ‘watershed’ event that has reshaped the structure of the international system and the power equilibrium. Its importance is elevated to the same status as the end of World War II… and the end of the Cold War… the tide is turning in China’s favor… for it to shape the new international order.” More boldness soon followed.

Reviewing diverse Chinese publications on South Korea, See-Won Byun found that “Geopolitical perspectives fuel pessimistic accounts of China-ROK security relations centered on regional interests in Northeast Asia… South Korea acts as a ‘pawn’ of US anti-China policy… China’s new online ‘fan nationalism’ and ‘collective rebellion’ weakened Korea’s cultural appeal from 2016 onward, with lasting ramifications.” The national identity divide had widened.⁴¹ As Dong Xiangrong clearly argued, Chinese faulted South Korea for lack of respect, such as daring to accuse China of human rights violations, discriminating against South Koreans inside China, criticizing China over the pandemic, and generally (notably, younger South Koreans) turning far more negative.⁴²

In 2021, as Moon Jae-in continued in office, Chinese thinking toward South Korea already had shifted, underscored by: first, the response to the heyday of North Korean diplomacy in 2018-19, tilting the approach to both sides of the peninsula and to the US role there away from the accommodation at times present earlier; second, the more polarized outlook on Northeast Asia and elsewhere reflected in joint statements with Russia; and third, the reaction to the Biden administration’s regional strategy, drawing Moon closer on a range of Indo-Pacific concerns. The tone of Chinese writings darkened even before Yoon Suk-yeol’s much-criticized policy changes. 

Kim Jong-un’s visits to China and Xi Jinping’s 2019 return visit are said to have dispelled the illusion that Seoul could proceed through ties to Washington and Pyongyang, while also refocusing the North’s thinking on China’s ability to resolve peninsular affairs.⁴³ If ROK leaders held out hope from 2013–17 that Xi was tilting toward Seoul, it was clear by 2022 that he had tilted sharply toward Pyongyang. There was no reason to expect a reversal, given the polarization of international relations recognized by China and welcomed so long as US leadership would not yield on matters deemed essential to China’s interests and identity, e.g., Taiwan but also the Korean Peninsula. If South Korea is seen through the lens of the Korean War, it is also seen through a renewed sense of North Korea’s considerable importance for China—seen both geopolitically and in historical identity.

In the waning days of the Moon administration, Chinese voices continued to hold out hope that a strategic opening would exist to counter Biden’s pressure on Seoul. One article argued that the Biden administration is increasingly targeting the US–South Korea alliance against China, but that differences in US and South Korean strategic interests and perceptions of China create an opening despite the fact that the bilateral alliance is no longer just aimed at North Korea, but is targeting China and has expanded from a focus on security to include economics, science and technology, regional governance, and the global order.⁴⁴ The essence of “smile diplomacy” was a path forward through China-led economic regionalism, a community—exclusive to Asia—of shared destiny, and a multilateral security framework in place of the ROK–US alliance. It envisioned Koreans thirsting for sovereignty: breaking free of US domination, which has long undermined autonomous exercise of authority in Seoul; and more earnestly pursuing reconciliation with Pyongyang. In the background, moreover, one could detect a more menacing tone, carrying forward the “wolf warrior” narrative.⁴⁵

In 2021, Chinese called for a CJK FTA as the pathway to China-led regionalism (Sinocentrism). Jin Xiangdan assessed its prospects.⁴⁶ Although negotiations had been ongoing since 2013, Jin argued that the 2020 signing of RCEP and the threat of global protectionism have convinced the three countries that an agreement is both more necessary and more feasible. RCEP provides a strong basis for a trilateral FTA, increasing its economic and strategic value. Yet, Jin cautioned that negotiations face significant challenges. After agreeing to RCEP, Japan and South Korea developed some hesitation toward increased economic interdependence with China, hindering FTA negotiations. Japan has become increasingly concerned about supply chain diversification and resiliency. South Korea views RCEP as consolidating South Korea’s East Asian supply chain and increasing its access to markets such as ASEAN, India, and Australia. It also seeks to join the CPTPP and is increasingly focused on closer trade ties with the United States, both of which reduce its interest in deepening economic dependence on China.

A second set of complications arises from disagreements about going farther than RCEP in sensitive areas like agriculture, automobiles, and machinery or to address the digital economy, competition, and state-owned enterprises. As major manufacturing companies, the three compete for market share. Japan views the high-standard trade rules as essential for a trade agreement. South Korea worries that further opening of its domestic market might limit its ability to expand given the overlap of its main export industries with those of Japan, while diminishing the benefits it has gained from its bilateral FTA with China. South Korea also faces increased competition from China’s rapidly growing high-tech industry and its competitive digital economy technology. A trilateral FTA might upset the balance it achieved between market openness and securing its industries, since China is focused on manufacturing. China sought a three-way FTA with Japan and South Korea to solidify the results and oppose US global protectionism. Yet, it was aware of new caution in South Korea as well as in Japan about deepening economic interdependence on China as both focused on closer trade ties with the US. Given its dependence on China, Seoul would be making a poor strategic choice, warned Jin Xiangdan, arguing for economic regionalism minus Washington.⁴⁷

A third set of challenges relates to the impact of Sino–US strategic competition. Jin asserted that the Biden administration is concerned that none of the multilateral trade frameworks in the Asia-Pacific include the United States, which poses difficulties for US efforts to reassert its global leadership. As its cooperation grows with Japan and South Korea on digital rules, intellectual property rights, and labor and environmental standards, Japan and South Korea will diverge more sharply from China. A US-centered supply chain would decrease its allies’ reliance on China. Jin added, it is desirable to conclude an FTA as soon as possible given the US efforts to contain China.⁴⁸

A Sinocentric historical worldview partially concealed until recently permeates Chinese writings in the 2020s. Whether the imperial history between China and Korea, the Korean War outlook, or the Cold War reasoning of authors, Seoul is faulted for its aberrant thinking. Security is the mainstay along with civilization in these narratives, which assume a zero-sum relationship between the Sino-ROK and US-ROK dyads, leaving no room for Seoul to distance itself from China’s regional order or for the ROK-US alliance. Keeping in mind the regional economic architecture, Chinese writers keep assuming that Seoul belongs in the BRI, not some US-led Indo-Pacific or supply chain framework. With no letup in historical and cultural arguments imbued with Sinocentric assumptions of enduring validity for the future of Asia, expectations had fallen that South Koreans would be changing course.

One factor impacting thinking on South Korea was recent glorification of the Korean War. In one account, there was no mention of South Korea as if it was just a remnant of the Korean Peninsula that was to be reincorporated by the legitimate government until an imperialist power intervened. This was a war against US aggression and Mao alone, against great opposition, made the brilliant decision to enter the war and stand on the side of internationalism and the socialist camp. Boosting Sino–Soviet and Sino–North Korean relations was the correct decision, helping to modernize China’s armed forces and to prevent a US invasion of China. It quotes Mao as insisting that Asians must decide Asian affairs,⁴⁹ not the US “invasion” on a par with Japan’s invasion of Northeast China twenty years earlier. Had China not resisted it would have led to aggression spreading to all of China. The article links the Korean War to today’s struggle over Taiwan, the joint defense of the socialist cause, and even the liberation of South Korea. The Korean War lives on as a standard for our times. Anger over the BTS award-speech in 2020, when the band’s leader acknowledged the suffering in the war shared by the ROK and US but omitted China, provided proof not only of the raw emotions aroused by the war but also of a “wolf warrior” outburst unleashed against the South Koreans.⁵⁰  

The May 2021 Moon–Biden summit aroused a spate of criticism that Moon had tilted sharply toward Washington. The response was more warnings, not a full break from smile diplomacy. Moon had managed to stay clear of the language of the Suga–Biden summit in April. China may have calculated that a severe response would guarantee the election of a conservative president and would also leave a bad image on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Also, as Beijing refocused on economics at a time of new uncertainty about its economy and hope for the new RCEP agreement, it appeared wary of damaging economic ties to Seoul. Even so, “wolf warrior” warnings were often in evidence.  

Calling for more balance between Sino–South Korean and US–South Korean relations or saying that Seoul is reneging on assurances to that end, Chinese sources were obsessed with the triangularity in international relations. Alarm over the possible election of a conservative president in 2022 was palpable. The May 2021 Moon–Biden summit drew criticism that even Moon was losing balance. Given the growing strategic competition between China and the US, Seoul can no longer maintain equal-distance diplomacy, authors warned. Burdened by a “small-country” complex, South Korea does not see straight and must fundamentally transform its strategic relationship with China.⁵¹ Simultaneous pursuit of positive ties with China and a close US alliance was no longer acceptable.

Despite some acknowledgment of Moon’s push for an autonomous strategy, Chinese doubted what he could achieve given simultaneous pursuit of a close US alliance. After all, the real barrier to “peace and prosperity” on the peninsula was not North Korea but the US and Moon’s conservative opposition. “Real sovereign diplomacy means abandonment of THAAD, insistence on Seoul’s own right to set North Korean policy, the end of the remnants of the Cold War on the peninsula, the establishment of a new peace and cooperation order, and diplomacy prioritizing Northeast Asian multilateral cooperation.” Bi Yingda doubted Moon would do this. Referring to US negative thinking about an end-of-war declaration, Bi called for a real end of the war with a new peninsular system.⁵²

Li Nan argued that South Korea will be forced to choose between China and the US; the US will try to sever its relationship with China in certain strategic fields; North Korea will see its longstanding alliance with China as a key tool by which to hold off US pressure; tensions between China and the US will aggravate DPRK–ROK relations, each siding with its ally.⁵³  It is this logic that clearly prevailed. Moon is compared unfavorably to Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun for not opening a gap with Washington. North Korea cannot denuclearize if the alliance is strong, it is implied, treating the ROK–US alliance and North–South relations as zero-sum. China–ROK relations are a function of them.

Moon had been treated leniently to 2020 while struggling against US pressure not to offend China, but his inability to resist US demands eroded any excuses, Chinese concluded, as Biden shifted the focus from a threat from North Korea to containment of China inclusive of economics, technology, regional governance, and the global order. Joint statements increasingly mentioned China.⁵⁴ The May 2021 US–South Korea summit was the first to publicly express the shared commitment to “preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait” and made indirect references to China in supporting freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the “Free and Open Indo–Pacific.”

Sun and Wang argued that the US-ROK alliance has now been drawn into Sino–US competition over the future of the world order. Unlike its earlier focus on the Korean Peninsula, the alliance touches on many issues of great concern to China, broadening to reflect the US great power strategy. In technology and economic fields, industrial integration will expand along with efforts to pull out of China. Seoul will become increasingly involved in Quad dialogues. Cooperation on values and human rights will intensify.⁵⁵  Pessimism about Seoul underscored warnings about “wolf warrior” responses.

The Moon–Biden summit of 2021 mentioned Taiwan, drawing criticism, and ended restrictions on Seoul’s missiles, seen in China as a step toward the US goal of putting intermediate missiles in South Korea. One Chinese writer warned that conservatives are now emboldened to seek the complete deployment of THAAD and reverse Moon’s “three no’s” to China. Moon was accused of a further tilt to the US and to the containment of China. Even if this was due to US pressure, South Korea’s diplomacy had taken a dangerous step away from strategic ambiguity in the Sino–US competition. The article ends with doubt that Sino–South Korean relations can continue in a healthy direction.⁵⁶

Ideal for China would have been South Korea joining the BRI. Making the case in late 2020 was Jiang Longfan saying if Seoul wants better ties, it should use the BRI as a platform to build trust, fuse economies together, and forge a community of shared culture and destiny.⁵⁷   As shown in the THAAD clash, security got in the way due to the US–ROK relationship. If US missile defense plans advance, a second THAAD crisis would follow. With the BRI as a platform, exchanges would boost mutual goodwill and lead to a China–South Korea civilizational community (Zhonghan wenming gongtongti). Xi proposed that Seoul join the BRI when the leaders met in Osaka in June 2019, which, Jiang argues, would impact geopolitics, economics, and cultural identity in Northeast Asia and raise Sino–ROK relations to a higher level. Alternatively, South Korea will suffer greatly if it gets entangled in great power relations. THAAD sanctions should have taught Seoul a lesson, Jiang said as a stark warning.

Some ambiguity in Chinese messages to South Korea persisted to March 2022 when Yoon won the plebiscite, although more strident Chinese demands and Moon’s perceived tilt to the United States made pessimism prevail. Having raised alarm about a conservative victory, Chinese were ill-disposed to give Yoon any benefit of the doubt. “[I]dentity is at the center of Chinese reactions to South Korea… waves of cultural clashes have left exchanges as a weak spot in relations and emotions raw, damaging mutual understanding. So-called erroneous consciousness among Korean conservatives distorts popular thinking about China, and Chinese emotions leave incidents ready to be magnified.”⁵⁸  Showcasing the identity clash with conservatives made it central in assessing Yoon.

In 2021, Zhao Yihei wrote about deepening US-ROK maritime security cooperation in the context of the US “Indo-Pacific” strategy, arguing that Seoul has cooperated but is unwilling to join the power struggle in the region. On protecting stability on the Korean Peninsula, the two have complementary strategic aims, and South Korea depends heavily on freedom of navigation, especially in the South China Sea. Voices in Seoul call for working more closely with the US on this. Between South Korea and China exists a dispute over an island and demarcation of exclusive economic territory, and Seoul fears that as Chinese influence grows, the result will not be beneficial to resolving these issues. Losing power, the US relies more on allied navies. Considering China’s influence on the peninsula, Seoul cannot openly join in the strategic competition of the US and China and sticks with strategic ambiguity. Yet, in a regional conflict, Seoul’s military strength can be utilized by the US for its “Indo-Pacific strategy,” and its assistance to Southeast Asian states in building up their maritime forces. Joint maritime activity could grow, especially under conservatives, but Moon Jae-in took steps to do this too. Such cooperation does not depend anymore on which party is in power, Zhao warned.⁵⁹

After the failure of the Hanoi summit and the worsening of Sino-US relations, Moon made a subtle shift, despite maintaining the status quo as a principle, tilting more to the US. He began to link up on values, asserting that more than security bound the alliance and boosting economic ties at the expense of China and through diversification of export markets. After Biden took office, this tilt became more pronounced. On disputed areas between Beijing and Washington, such as the Taiwan Strait, the Asia-Pacific, economics, technology, and the international order, Moon made some adjustments. A few reasons are given: aggravation of Sino-US relations left less room to maneuver at a time of Trump’s growing pressure; a quest for US support to break the logjam with Pyongyang and, at the same time, not lose US support in the widening rift between Seoul and Tokyo. When Biden took office, Moon had shifted further on values and the “Indo-Pacific strategy.”

As prospects for North Korean talks collapsed in contrast to Sino-North Korean relations, Seoul’s tilt to the US increased. Falling approval ratings for Moon and falling public opinion toward China since the THAAD deployment, which only deepened with the pandemic and again in response to the Beijing Winter Olympics, made it harder for Moon to stick to a balance. In May 2021 at the summit with Biden, he referred to the Taiwan question, touching on China’s core interests. A linkage was also drawn between the “New Southern Policy” and freedom of navigation as well as the “Indo-Pacific strategy.” A positive reference was made to the Quad. US approval for longer-range ROK missiles killed two birds with one stone, winning public approval in South Korea and threatening China and Russia. High tech cooperation grew closer as in semi-conductors, serving US aims to damage China. Thus, the Moon period saw a shift from strategic ambiguity toward leaning to the US despite Moon’s insistence that balance was still in effect. Even so, as 2022 approached, emphasis was put on the limits of Moon’s tilt to the United States rather than on how far he went.

Awareness of China’s economy and North Korea’s nuclear weapons as ROK core interests had had a compelling effect. Seoul had sought more autonomy within the scope of the ROK-US alliance, leading Kim Young-sam to increase ties to China while strengthening traditional ties to the US. Roh Moo-hyun to go further by calling South Korea a “Northeast Asian balancer,” including China along with the alliance, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye to advocate “join with the US and China,” maintaining a balance between the two, and Moon Chung-in, advising Moon Jae-in, to seek diplomacy of a middle power surpassing the Sino-US split, and becoming a balancer cooperating with other middle power states in forging a new multilateral order. Yet, Moon Jae-in recognized that Seoul lacked the diplomatic influence for this and delivered less than expected, combining following the United States and strategic autonomy, rather than tilting toward China. Still, he avoided clearly choosing sides, as Yoon will likely do even as he maintains closeness to the US as the foundation.⁶⁰ Such cautious optimism could not survive even the initial months of Yoon’s tenure as president.

Chinese recognized that, as a conservative, Yoon’s view of the Sino-US strategic paradigm differed from Moon’s. In his campaign he clearly signaled a tilt to the US in areas including supply chains, and a broadening of alliance cooperation to regional and global issues from peninsular ones. He supported the Quad, criticized Moon’s strategic ambiguity, and warned that not choosing sides leaves people thinking erroneously that Seoul keeps leaning to China. Only by stabilizing the alliance with the US can Seoul gain China’s respect, his camp argued. New challenges for Sino-ROK relations would follow: (1) Yoon’s North Korea policy—sharply at odds with Moon’s—could upset ties, as through THAAD expansion, development of intermediate missiles, and taking denuclearization as a precondition for dialogue; (2) views of China could harden, dropping the “three no’s” of Moon or joining the Quad; and (3) the Russo-Ukraine war could test Sino-ROK relations, as the US uses it as a pretext for creating an atmosphere of polarization and putting values in the diplomatic forefront. By repeating the word “freedom,” Yoon would push Seoul to the US side and away from China. Hinting that China assists Russia could lead to secondary economic sanctions, as the US seeks ROK support. Yet, Chinese were prone to point to persisting elements of stability in Sino-ROK relations. Close economic ties are an unbreakable anchor even if Seoul is intent on reducing economic dependency. With the Sino-ROK FTA and RCEP coming into effect, there is wide room to expand economic ties. The opposition party opposes damaging Sino-ROK relations and for the next two years can prevent foreign policy leaning to the US. Another factor in China’s favor is the Confucian tradition of pragmatism, backed by common interests on trade and North Korean nuclear issues. Campaign rhetoric often is contradicted once in office. Mutual interests are likely to prevail. With these caveats, Yoon’s likely shift to the US was downplayed for a brief time.

Scott Snyder argued that verbal jousting between China and South Korea had escalated in the spring of 2023 over the ROK’s growing alignment with the United States. Since Yoon’s inauguration a year earlier, there had been a drumbeat of criticism over joining the “Indo-Pacific Initiative” and economic security coordination, but what was new was a combination of attacks over Yoon’s Japan policy and his Taiwan policy, as if he was abandoning the “One-China” policy. Ambassador Xing Haiming’s remarks that “those who bet on China’s loss will surely regret their decision in the future” in a meeting with opposition leader Lee Jae-myung was seen as a threat to punish Seoul for strengthening its alignment with Washington. Snyder added, “tensions over security issues appear to be expanding. Competition and occasional conflict between Chinese and South Korean fishing vessels have periodically strained the relationship. In addition, Chinese military incursions into South Korea’s exclusive economic zone and its air defense identification zones have increased in frequency, though they are not always reported.”⁶¹ Defiance of China’s regional strategy was less likely to be countenanced by Xi Jinping.

Chinese Strategic Thinking toward Japan, 2021-2024

In 2020, Shi Yinhong, et. al, emphasized the importance of stabilizing Sino-Japanese relations against the backdrop of worsening Sino-US relations, seizing the pandemic as an opportunity to deepen economic cooperation. High-level meetings and summits would drive ties forward, including the promised state visit when conditions permit. Differences in US and Japanese strategy also left an opening, e.g., on responding to the South China Sea conflict, the East China Sea problem, and the Taiwan problem. Preparations were needed to keep illusions from taking root in Japan and to preserve the foundation of Sino-Japanese relations. The hope that closer ties to Japan could lessen rising strains in the Sino-US relationship permeated this last-ditch appeal.⁶²

The notion that Xi would visit Japan and breathe new life into bilateral relations hung in the air into 2021 before it faded away. A downward spiral in relations visible in 2020 only intensified thereafter. Chinese blamed Japan for being a driving force for the Quad, whose foreign ministers’ summit in October 2020 drew criticism before Suga welcomed Biden’s upgrading of the grouping. The Suga-Biden summit of April 2021 angered Chinese, who lamented the impact on Sino–Japanese relations.
That month, one source argued, three events caused a rapid deterioration in Chinese views of Japan and in relations more generally: first, Japan decided to discharge wastewater from the destroyed Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean; then, during their leadership meeting, Suga and Biden affirmed their support for a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue and their concern over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute; and finally, Suga sent an offering to the Yasukuni shrine. Two points were likely symptoms of China’s anger, while the actual cause was concurring with Biden’s policy.⁶³

Accusations charged Japan with turning against China in 2021, often attributing it to US pressure. Biden pressed for a “battle of systems” with politics, human rights, and ideology involved. After Suga had replaced Abe, Japan also made human rights and the Taiwan question matter for pressuring China. At Biden’s direction, Japan’s FOIP lost any autonomous thrust. Putting new pressure on China, the US sought to reduce its technological advance.⁶⁴ Having failed to waylay Japan’s moves, China turned sharply against Japan as well as responding to Biden’s agenda with unprecedented fervor.

If Japan was long depicted as seeking leadership, limiting both China and the United States in the Indo-Pacific, it was also seen as not wanting a strategic showdown with China. Yet, mutually exclusive geopolitical strategies, trade and technology competition, and ideological differences intensified, making it less willing to rely on Chinese supply chains. Chinese worried that Japan would strengthen geo-economic competitiveness, further deepen mini-lateral frameworks, and further expand the geographical scope of the “Indo-Pacific.” The clearest direct impact would be on investment in China’s BRI projects because the two countries’ companies are competing to invest in infrastructure projects and for supply chains and market share. Debating how China should respond, one author took a positive approach: developing its own “two-ocean” Indo-Pacific strategy, building on advantages as an “economically attractive power,” increasing the competitiveness of its companies for infrastructure projects, and promoting positive cultural exchanges to strengthen China’s regional image.⁶⁵ Such a positive soft power scenario, however, was the exception. No longer able to drive a wedge between Japan and the US, China was shifting decisively to targeting Japan with hard power.

In the first half of 2021, Chinese could still find reason for optimism, e.g., that Japan’s strategy of making alliances with faraway countries while neglecting its neighbors, as well as its blame-shifting, would isolate it in Asia; few countries would be willing to pick sides as challenges existed in Japan’s relations with South Korea, North Korea, China, Russia, and Southeast Asia. Japan would be undone by failure to work collectively as part of the global community, Liu Jiangyong concluded.⁶⁶ After all, Japan had succumbed to US pressure. Biden pressed for a “battle of systems” with politics, human rights, and ideology involved. Thus, Japan’s FOIP went through stages, first to draw the US in, then under Trump pulling back by not calling it a strategy and seeking cooperation with China, and last, under Biden’s direction, losing any autonomous thrust.⁶⁷ Japan was digging its own grave.

Pan Xiaoming charged that “In the wake of the pandemic, the United States and Japan have reconfigured their supply chains to reduce their dependence on China and promote their domestic industries in the name of national security… restrictions imposed on high-tech exports by the United States and Japan undermine the division of labor foundational to regional value chains and threaten continued economic integration in the region.” If Chinese were increasingly critical of Japan in 2021, they also praised the November 2020 RCEP agreement as a bright spot, promoting structural changes through the first trade agreement between Japan and either South Korea or China.⁶⁸

In mid-2021, Huang Bei argued that Sino–Japanese relations were deteriorating. For a few years. relations had been improving, he said, but from April 2020, they had grown increasingly volatile.⁶⁹ The fault was all Japan’s, making statements on Hong Kong and Xinjiang, areas of great sensitivity to China, as daring to raise the territorial dispute over the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands with its security partners. The article anticipated that relations would further deteriorate for three main reasons: (1) Japan no longer needs to increase its cooperation with China to manage Trump’s unpredictability; (2) the United States has reaffirmed its security commitment to the US–Japan alliance as part of Biden’s broader focus on alliance relations; thus encouraging Japan to take a firmer position on the island dispute while persuading Japan to support its Indo–Pacific strategy, which targets China; and (3) Japanese embrace the “China threat theory,” pressuring the government to take a harsher line against China. Yet, all was not bleak. China still plays a major role as Japan’s largest trading power, and, given the economic turmoil due to the pandemic, both Japan’s government and public are acutely concerned about improving Japan’s economic position. Japan is also committed to regional economic integration, including the new RCEP deal, which will drive further Sino–Japanese economic cooperation, making economic decoupling very unlikely in the near term. Huang concluded that although relations will deteriorate, the degree to which they falter will be limited by shared interests.

At the start of 2022, Zhu Feng analyzed the basic trends in Sino-Japanese relations.⁷⁰ He argued that relations worsened under Suga and even more so under Kishida. In 2022, a critical 50th anniversary year, key tests will be faced in managing relations. The US factor will be decisive since Japan is one of just a few Asian states completely on the US side. Zhu posited that Japan faces a duality: political and security ties with the US, and economic ties with China, from which it gets ever more benefit. Japan can join China in steering change toward stability in this transformative era, focusing on the regional order with economics in the forefront and cooperating with China, which it needs more than the US does. While stress is put on why Tokyo should cooperate more with Beijing, the hidden message may be that Beijing has an opportunity to cooperate more as well, recognizing greater prospects with its neighbor and averting an even greater Japanese shift toward the US. This appeal, arguably, represented a last-ditch effort to avert the accelerating downward slope in relations.

In light of Japan’s December 2022 adoption of new security documents (the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and Defense Buildup Program), Chinese warned that the decision to adopt a more offensive posture destabilizes both regional security and Sino–Japanese relations.⁷¹ They took exception to including for the first time the promotion of “economic security policies to achieve autonomous economic prosperity” and to the assertion that China’s current foreign policy and behavior “present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge in ensuring the peace and security of Japan and the peace and security of the international community” Japan, it is said, has discarded its postwar defense-oriented posture not only for long -held ambitions to become a “great power,” making important shifts during the Abe administration, but due to ongoing strategic competition with China and the “Ukraine crisis.”

Japan’s enhanced capabilities will strengthen the US–Japan alliance, which would otherwise be diminished by US decline, and will boost US confidence to continue great power competition with China, Meng Xiaoxu argued, adding that the three security documents increase the risk that Japan will use force in a regional dispute, for example, to defend Taiwan or attack North Korea. At the same time, inviting external powers to intervene in the region increases both the possibility of Japanese intervention in the South China Sea disputes and of NATO involvement in the Asia-Pacific, leading to the “NATOization of Asia,” a regional arms race, and less regional economic integration. The new security documents damage Sino–Japanese strategic mutual trust and demonstrate Japan’s collaboration with the United States, NATO, and other powers to contain China, Meng says, ignoring the poor state of Sino–Japanese relations that preceded these 2022 documents or China’s role in contributing to frosty bilateral relations.

Yet, Chinese detect a ray of hope in economic and demographic pressures that hinder efforts to increase defense spending and constitutional challenges that arouse strong opposition from pacifists. In addition, Japan will not be able to obtain strategic autonomy or equality; the United States will determine the amount of independence and power that Japan can have to advance US regional objectives. Furthermore, Japan’s three security documents have raised concerns among its neighbors, most notably China, North Korea, and Russia, while South Korea responded coolly. Meng urged Japan to prioritize regional peace and stability and affirm its peaceful constitution, showing the continued relevance of Japan’s history of wartime aggression and regional wariness about what Japan might do with offensive military capabilities. As Chinese place responsibility for deteriorating regional stability on Japan’s “dangerous behavior” and its “pro-American Cold War mentality” regarding China’s rise, they leave open the door to an awakening to the danger of entrapment by the US and loss of autonomy and suffering from loss of trust in ASEAN. Recognizing a bleaker regional security environment, authors still raise doubts that Japan could stay on course with the United States.⁷²

Conclusion

Tensions over Northeast Asia came to a head in 2021 to 2024, intensifying year-by-year. Beijing rejected Biden’s foreign policy meant to push back through multilateralism but also to set a path toward stability. It severely criticized Kishida’s security focus, denying Japan’s right to turn away from its postwar passivity in an ominous environment. And it soured on Moon’s rebalance toward the United States even before castigating Yoon for going further, while responding to North Korea, Russia, and China’s aggressive inclinations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Taking a supportive attitude toward Putin’s war and giving sustenance to Kim Jong-un’s belligerence, Xi embraced polarization of Northeast Asia more forthrightly than over his prior eight years on top.

In 2021-22 the impact of polarizing forces could be obscured through denials of Biden’s success.
The obligatory note of optimism in analyses of Northeast Asia posited no less than four factors that could mitigate US-led alliance triangulation. First, the legacy of ROK-Japanese distrust lingers over territorial and history issues. Second, threat perceptions and strategic interests differ. Third, economic interests are at odds, fueled by US protectionism. Fourth, domestic politics could interfere. Despite reservations, Chinese warned that polarization is intensifying in Northeast Asia with no hint of China’s responsibility or need to change course. Realism was not in evidence.

In analyses of other states active in Northeast Asia Chinese thinking emerged clearly in the first years of the 2020s. As in the case of Russia, which was obsessed with rebuilding the “Russian world,” under the sway of historical memory and an unshakable opposition to signs of Westernization in its assumed sphere of control, including Ukraine, China has also proceeded through stages in its responses to the West and the US role in Northeast Asia. It cannot accept South Korea (Westernized and defiant of China’s natural sphere of control) or even Japan as an equal sovereign state. Neither is recognized as a great power or a center of civilization, putting them in the position of Ukraine unworthy of standing in the way of the neighbor great power. For Russia to stand up to the West for its rightful status, it required a boost in self-confidence and a weakening of the West, not so much behavioral affronts from the United States apart from support for the tilt within Ukraine away from Russia. Similarly, the tilt in Seoul and even more in Tokyo away from Beijing suffices to create a confrontational atmosphere. Yet, Moscow’s belligerence to the West is not wholly endorsed. Warning that it overestimated the speed of multipolarization and underestimated the capacity of the US and its allies to prop up the existing international order, some approved of Russia’s reasoning but not its timing in 2022. In this way, they justified similar Chinese reasoning on Northeast Asia, adding a dollop of patience on timing.

Compared to 2013 through 2020, from 2021 Chinese tolerance had dropped toward policies in the United States, Japan, and South Korea related to geopolitics in Northeast Asia. Nothing the US garnered approval, whether toward China, Russia, or North Korea. US efforts to steer ties to Japan and South Korea were invariably condemned as “Cold War thinking.” Behavior once seen as warranting cooperation or at least some understanding with the US and its allies now elicited only vitriol as a threat to China’s agenda for regional security. A downward spiral ensued as Biden’s arrival in 2021 reverberated in greater negativity to Japan and South Korea, followed by harsher criticism of all three in 2022 over their responses to the Russian aggression linked to possible Chinese aggression in Asia. The atmosphere in 2023 not only did not improve, but it also slipped another notch when Xi Jinping rebuffed Biden’s overtures and put more pressure on US allies. If 2024 brought a slight reprieve for obvious economic reasons, no course correction had occurred. By spring, China’s leaders were boldly issuing an ultimatum to the United States: stabilize ties (on regional and economic security) or face the consequences of a downward spiral or even conflict.

No other country in Northeast Asia joined China in the BRI, complicating pursuit of Sinocentrism. Putin was the honored guest at the BRI conferences, but Russia kept its distance. In the 2020s, new pressure was put on South Korea to join, just as its economic “de-risking” was being targeted. If the BRI proved to be a reach, then a CJK FTA offered the next best thing. The fact that in May 2024 a CJK summit could proceed (after a five-year hiatus) at China’s urging proved that China’s quest for economic integration continued, even if relations with US allies faced new troubles. In the case of Sino-Russian relations, wartime sanctions gave the biggest boost to such integration.

If economic integration fell short of China’s desires, a monopoly over commerce excluding all main rivals was the next best thing. This existed for North Korea and was coming into view for Russian purchases of key industrial items. By default, the socialist legacy triangle came into sight. In contrast, hope was lost for the Confucian legacy triangle. It had centered on South Korea, the country whose rejection of a three-decade trajectory of rebalancing toward Sinocentrism stung the most. Expectations for Japan had been much lower. No wonder, Chinese writings about the
“loss” of South Korea are tinged with regret and occasional, desperate hopes for a reversal. The failure of Sinocentrism in South Korea had become a centerpiece of China’s coverage in 2021-24.