The State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi meets with Park Jin, the new foreign minister of the Republic of Korea, via a video link in Beijng, on May 16, 2022. PHOTO XINHUA The situation on the Korean Peninsula could worsen because of the policy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea President Yoon Suk-yeol toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which both believe in putting maximum pressure on the DPRK, rather than using dialogue or engagement to resolve the peninsula's nuclear issue.
The DPRK has recently fired 16 missiles, which could make matters worse.
The ROK should think twice before participating in US multilateral strategic mechanisms, such as the Quad security dialogue between the US, India, Japan and Australia, and the Five Eyes co-operation mechanism of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which China sees as tools of major power competition.
The Moscow-Ukraine conflict has brought the Moscow-Washington tug of war to the fore, but the US still sees China as its biggest strategic rival. After the conflict began, some Chinese scholars argued that it would help shift Washington's focus from China. But the foreign policy of the Biden administration shows that the US strategic pressure on China has not been loosened.
The US will be reluctant to cooperate with China to resolve the Korean Peninsula issue. This could cause more tensions on the peninsula, prompting the DPRK to conduct more nuclear tests this year.
Some major powers don't show the political will to resolve the issue through cooperation, instead intending to use it as a bargaining chip to fulfill their own interests.
China is working to improve relations with its neighbors in the Korean Peninsula to help stabilize the situation, as well as to improve its friendly relations with its neighbors.
If tensions in the North and Northeast Asia increase, it will give the US more excuses to consolidate its presence in the region by deploying more strategic weapons in the ROK, which is the last thing China wants to see.
Chinese vice-president Wang Qishan attended Yoon's inauguration ceremony recently, becoming the highest-ranking Chinese official to not only attend the swearing in of an ROK president, but also visit a foreign country since the COVID-19 epidemic. There is no doubt that Beijing wants to strengthen relations with Seoul.
China has always treated the ROK as a very important partner in terms of economic cooperation, but also regional and global issues.
The related parties want to see the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but they should take actions rather than just pay lip service to the issue. If the peninsula isn't denuclearized, it could trigger an arms race in Northeast Asia.
The US should abandon its strategic competition with China and cooperate on issues of common interests.
Instead of blindly following the US policies, the ROK should strike the right balance between its relations with the US and China.
The author is a professor at the Department of China's Regional Strategy, National Institute of International Strategy and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The views do not necessarily reflect the views of China Daily.