What’s wrong with Seoul-Beijing ties?

BEIJING — “South Korea has been deeply frustrated with China while dealing with the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong incidents,” observed Professor Zhao Huji, an expert on Korean affairs at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Professor Zhao Huji

By Sunny Lee

BEIJING — “South Korea has been deeply frustrated with China while dealing with the Cheonan and Yeonpyeong incidents,” observed Professor Zhao Huji, an expert on Korean affairs at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

The school where Zhao teaches is an elite institute — like the mid-career program at Harvard’s Kennedy School — where promising Communist Party cadres are groomed.

Zhao is able to appreciate the sentiment in Seoul as he often visits and meets with Korean academics and government officials.

This year, South Korea has had a bitter diplomatic spat with China over their differences in dealing with North Korean belligerence.

In that process, Koreans began to form an image of a bullying, muscular yet arrogant China that doesn’t measure up to its size in terms of taking global responsibility.

The latest uproar over a fishing boat incident, in which Chinese fishermen attacked South Korean coast guards during a fatal clash in the West Sea, certainly didn’t help. Beijing’s demand for an apology and compensation greatly upset Koreans as they felt things should have been the other way around.

All this comes against the backdrop that the image of South Korea is also deteriorating in China.

In a recent poll by Global Times, a tabloid published in Beijing, an absolute majority of Chinese netizens (94.5 percent) called for China to “take South Korea down by force” as they believe it was becoming “increasingly arrogant” by teaming up with the United States to corner China. These people also said China should “teach Korea a clear lesson.”

Despite its visible presence, the anti-Korean sentiment in China is often an underestimated item by Korean policymakers. For example, on May 1, President Lee Myung-bak was in Shanghai and held an interview with the Chinese state CCTV. Reporter Shui Junyi asked Lee a question that was not part of the prepared script. It was about the anti-Korean sentiment. Lee fumbled and later asked CCTV not to include this particular part, according to Shui.

Critics say Lee is not well versed in China affairs, even though Beijing is Seoul’s largest trading partner and export destination. Lee is also seen as having a way too conspicuous love affair with major ally, the United States, making China feel jilted.

For example, after the sinking of the Cheonan, the Lee administration didn’t invite China to join the international team of investigators to probe the wreckage. Beijing later watered down Seoul’s effort to bring international condemnation down on Pyongyang.

On the Yeonpyeong incident, Korea felt insulted when China sent an envoy to Seoul to “give a one-hour lecture” to President Lee on the history of inter-Korean conflict without bringing up, not even once, the word “Yeonpyeong.” China felt South Korea was taking the matter too far by conducting multiple and large-scale military drills that might provoke irascible North Korea and could lead to a full-scale armed clash in the region.

Given the robust anti-China sentiment in South Korea and the increasing anti-Korea heat in China, even a seasoned expert on their bilateral relations like Zhao doesn’t see an immediate thaw.

“I don’t see a good solution. The matter will take some time,” said Zhao, who attributes the problem partly to the rising nationalism on both sides.

Seoul and Beijing largely differ in their approaches to Pyongyang. “North Korea is a special issue. A special issue needs a special way to handle it,” said Zhao.

According to Zhao, this “special way” also provides the best avenue to deal with overall Sino-Korean bilateral issues as well.

He said he could think of only one possible solution. “The two countries need to establish a high-level, confidential channel to communicate with each other. Otherwise, conflict will continue,” said Zhao.

South Korea and China currently have a number of channels where academics and researchers from think tanks, who have advisory roles to their governments, participate.

According to Zhao, they are inadequate to effectively tackle challenging bilateral issues. “We need a political communication platform where more ‘weighty’ figures participate,” he said.

“It should be at the level of a former president, or least, a prime minster.”

A Korean scholar, who is familiar with Zhao’s argument, disowned Zhao’s proposal. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the scholar said the key is not about having an “organization” or “who” heads the organization. But, he argued, it would essentially require a change of attitude in China to treat its former vassal state as a sovereign nation on an equal footing in the modern age. He feared Beijing’s historically overbearing mindset may fail to appreciate how modern diplomatic decorum should be conducted, for example, by sending a lower-ranking official as a counterpart to the proposed platform where Seoul sends a former head of state.

Zhao said the problems the two countries have with each other stem partly from a difference of interests, but also partly from the different political systems. For example, he said in democratic South Korea a newly-elected government can pursue a completely different policy on North Korea than a previous administration.

“But China cannot drastically shift its policy on North Korea that way when Seoul asks Beijing to do so (because China’s leadership is still the same). This is the kind of things that Koreans lack in understanding,” said Zhao.

Even though China and South Korea this year have seen their largest differences on North Korea, for Zhao a further fundamental issue that holds back the Seoul-Beijing ties is still something else.

“North Korea is just a factor, yet not a fundamental source for conflicts between South Korea and China. On a much deeper and fundamental level, I think the issue is the incompatibility of the political governance systems of the two countries,” Zhao said.

“It’s a clash of ideologies.”