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As I See It | Gap between China, South Korea is widening as Seoul pivots to Washington
- It couldn’t come at a worse time for Beijing, as it prepares for a major leadership reshuffle amid an economic slowdown and global pushback
- Recent surveys have revealed the trust deficit between the two nations and suggest there could be difficult times ahead for the bilateral relationship
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Eight weeks into the job, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has given Beijing an idea of what Seoul’s pivot to Washington may look like.
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He has promised to join the United States to help preserve peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, and to step up a military alliance with the US and Japan. Last week he became the first South Korean leader to attend a Nato summit.
It could not come at a worse time for Beijing, as the leadership prepares for a major reshuffle while facing the worst economic slowdown in decades caused by its zero-Covid rules and global pushback against its pro-Russia stance and assertive foreign policy.
Who is South Korea’s newly elected president Yoon Suk-yeol and what are his plans?
Recent surveys have meanwhile revealed the trust deficit between the two Asian neighbours and suggest there could be a rough patch ahead under Yoon, who narrowly won the March election riding a wave of rising anti-Chinese sentiment.
A poll by the US-based Pew Research Centre released last week found that favourable views of China had sunk to a record low in South Korea, one of the biggest declines across 19 countries surveyed. Just 19 per cent of respondents had a positive opinion of China when polled between February and June, compared to 38 per cent in a 2018 poll.
That was in line with the results of other recent surveys, including one by Korean magazine SisaIN and Hankook Research last year that found South Koreans viewed China more negatively than Japan for the first time in decades. The 1,000 South Koreans surveyed also overwhelmingly favoured Washington over Beijing.
Academics have also been polled on their views of the relationship. Those in South Korea tended to have a more pessimistic outlook than those in China, according to a survey early this year by Sungkyunkwan University’s Sungkyun Institute of China Studies in Seoul.
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