APEC summit shows intensified rivalry between US and China

By Mitch Shin

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held in San Francisco ended with the confirmation that leaders will pursue the summit’s theme: “Creating a Resilient and Sustainable Future for All.”

As economic and environmental challenges such as AI and WTO reform were the main agendas discussed during the APEC summit, there was not enough room for the leaders to discuss security challenges during the summit. Despite growing threats from North Korea, the summit only briefly touched on it and instead focused more on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas war — two key U.S. priorities at this moment in time.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol held a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Nov. 16 on the sidelines of the APEC summit. The meeting came two months after the two leaders met during the G20 summit in New Delhi, India.

Delivering the welcome remarks for the seventh summit meeting with Kishida this year, Yoon touted his government’s efforts to restore the consultative groups between the two countries that boosted bilateral cooperation. Kishida emphasized his hope to continue cooperation in various sectors involving politics, security, the economy and culture.

According to the press release from the South Korean presidential office, the two leaders agreed to cooperate on North Korea, Ukraine and other key security issues based on the Camp David spirit as South Korea and Japan will join the U.N. Security Council as non-permanent members starting next year. The Camp David spirit is the term generated after the trilateral South Korea-U.S.-Japan summit held at Camp David, the U.S. presidential retreat, in August.

With the Yoon government’s dedication to renewing ties with Japan by announcing its own plan to compensate wartime forced laborers and delivering its support on Tokyo’s plan to discharge contaminated water from Fukushima, the South Korea-U.S.-Japan coalition seems to be working.

However, Tokyo’s response to Seoul’s one-sided courtship has not been enough, considering its repeated sovereignty claims concerning the Dokdo islets and its continued fabrication of historical disputes with South Korea.

Despite Tokyo’s insufficient efforts to build a future-oriented relationship with South Korea, Yoon will continue to show his unconditional support as it was anticipated that Yoon, since he ran for the presidential election, would take concrete steps to improve ties with Japan under any scenario. In light of his low approval ratings, however, it is uncertain if his powerful drive to mend ties with Japan will sway South Korean minds to support his approach to Japan.

The trilateral South Korea-U.S.-Japan meeting was also held before the wrap-up of the APEC summit. However, no new updates were announced on how they will cope with the North’s cooperation with Russia and its ceaseless ballistic missile development program. According to media reports, the meeting was aimed at sharing updates on what they agreed upon at the Camp David summit.

In this context, there will be no significant impact on the security environment of the Korean Peninsula in the wake of multilateral diplomacy performed at APEC. The series of summits including the bilateral summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping demonstrated that a clear confrontation between the U.S. and its allies and China will continue.

According to the readout of the White House, Biden and Xi agreed to resume high-level military-to-military communication so as to prevent conflicts and crises from occurring due to miscalculations. It is good news that the two most powerful men in the world agreed to cooperate to prevent chaos and conflicts from happening.

However, the two leaders again verified that they are on different tracks.

“Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed, and one country’s success is an opportunity for the other,” Xi said before the bilateral meeting with Biden in Woodside, California.

It has been Beijing’s firm stance that it wants to construct a new order in the U.S.-led international system. Despite Xi’s messages that China and the U.S. can “coexist in peace” and “pursue win-win cooperation,” the rivalry between China and the U.S. is continuously going to be intensified as Biden called Xi a dictator during the press conference held after the U.S.-China summit. Considering China’s rapid economic growth over the decades and its potential to become a G1 country, Beijing will stick with its strategy to build a new rules-based order that is in line with its national interests.

Biden also admitted that Xi has a different view than he has on a lot of things although he respected Xi’s consistent stance on issues. He also said that he and Xi can come together and find mutual interests but that it should be in the interests of the American people.

“The United States will continue to compete vigorously with the PRC,” Biden said. PRC is an acronym for the People's Republic of China, the county's official name.

In the absence of diplomacy and inter-Korean dialogue, Seoul needs to draw attention and support from Beijing over its policy toward North Korea. In this context, it was important for Yoon to have a meeting with Xi to reiterate his broad outlook on North Korea and the way to cooperate for the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula with Xi during the APEC summit. However, the bilateral meeting between the leaders of South Korea and China was not arranged even though Xi met Kishida and Biden. South Korean and Chinese foreign ministers will hold a meeting this month but this skipped summit between Yoon and Xi implies that Seoul and Beijing are not on good terms.

According to North Korean state-controlled media reports, officials of Pyongyang and Moscow signed a protocol on Nov. 15 vowing the expansion of their bilateral cooperation.

“The Protocol of the 10th Meeting of the Trade, Economic and Scientific Cooperation Commission between the Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Government of the Russian Federation was signed,” the KCNA said on Nov. 16. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.

If North Korea successfully launches its military reconnaissance satellite by the end of the month as South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik speculates, it would be a clear demonstration that Russia is backing up North Korea and the North’s missile programs will advance further going forward.

Mitch Shin is a young fellow at The Institute for Peace & Diplomacy. Shin was an assistant editor and chief Koreas correspondent for The Diplomat, and a non-resident research fellow at The Institute for Security & Development Policy, Stockholm Korea Center.