South Korea hosts Xi as Chinese leader rekindles fraught ties

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung hosted Xi Jinping for their first meeting on Saturday as the Chinese head of state took centre stage and reforged old ties at an Asian summit from which US leader Donald Trump was largely absent.

The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came on the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade and a day after his meeting with Canada’s premier reset damaged ties.

Trump flew to South Korea for the summit but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, the pair agreeing to dial down a dispute that has roiled markets and disrupted global supply chains.

His departure left the Chinese leader to take centre stage at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where he framed Beijing as a responsible power against the chaos unleashed by the United States on the international order.

Lee welcomed Xi at a grand opening ceremony complete with soldiers wearing traditional garb.

The visit was the Chinese leader’s first since 2014 and comes after years of strained ties over everything from trade to cultural disputes.

Lee told Xi he had “long looked forward to meeting you in person” and framed his trip as a reset in relations.

“As our two countries move from a vertical structure of economic cooperation to a more horizontal and mutually beneficial one, we must work together to build a relationship that delivers shared prosperity,” Lee told Xi, whose vast economy represents South Korea’s largest trading partner.

Xi, in turn, described China and South Korea as “important neighbours that cannot be moved and also partners that cannot be separated”.

He told Lee that the two countries should “respect each other’s societal differences and development paths… (and) resolve contradictions and disagreements through friendly consultation”, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

Rekindle ties 

Lee also pitched China as a partner in Seoul’s efforts to rekindle frayed ties with North Korea, with which it remains technically at war.

Stressing the need for “stability” in the region, Lee noted “recent high-level exchanges between China and North Korea”— an apparent reference to leader Kim Jong Un’s recent attendance at a major military parade in Beijing.

Those meetings, Lee said, “are helping to create conditions for renewed engagement with Pyongyang”.

“I hope that South Korea and China will strengthen strategic communication… and work together to resume dialogue with the North,” Lee told Xi.

Ahead of their meeting, Pyongyang had dismissed Seoul’s hopes for denuclearisation as a “pipedream” which “can never be realized even if it talks about it a thousand times”.

South Korea’s national security advisor Wi Sung-lac said Xi reaffirmed to Lee that China “would continue efforts to help resolve issues and promote peace and stability on the Korean peninsula”.

During Xi’s visit Seoul said South Korea and China had renewed their 70 trillion won ($49 billion) currency swap agreement for another five years, and hoped the deal would “help stabilise the financial and foreign exchange markets of both countries”.

The two countries also signed several MOUs, including on a joint response to voice phishing and online scams, Seoul said.

Passing the baton

Lee earlier passed the APEC baton to Xi, who will host next year’s summit in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

With the US president absent, Xi has used APEC to reach out to countries with which Beijing has had frosty relations.

He met Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on the sidelines of the event on Friday, the first formal talks between the two countries’ leaders since 2017.

Xi told the Liberal leader he was determined to work together to get relations back on the “right track” and invited Carney to visit China.

Carney described the meeting as a “turning point” in ties between Ottawa and Beijing.

Canada’s relations with China are among the worst of any Western nation.

However, they could find common ground because they are both at the sharp end of Trump’s tariff onslaught, even after Xi and the US leader’s deal on Thursday to dial back tensions.

Carney said on Saturday he had apologised to Trump over an anti-tariff ad featuring former US leader Ronald Reagan that sent the president into a rage, leading him to cancel trade talks and slap additional 10 percent tariffs on Canada.

Trade talks would restart when the United States was “ready”, Carney said.

And, he said, he had accepted Xi’s invitation to visit “in the new year”.

Xi also sat down on Friday with Japan’s new premier Sanae Takaichi, long seen as a China hawk.

She told Xi she wanted a “strategic and mutually beneficial relationship”.