Meetings can help bring out best of three

Foreign Minister Wang Yi will attend the 11th China-Japan-ROK Trilateral Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Tokyo on Saturday. Wang and Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya will also cochair the Sixth China-Japan High-Level Economic Dialogue during his stay in Japan, according to a release of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

It has been one and a half years since the previous trilateral ministers' meeting was held in Busan, the Republic of Korea, in November, 2023, and about six years since the high-level economic dialogue between China and Japan was last held in April 2019 in Beijing.

Both the ROK and Japan have seen tremendous changes in their domestic politics over the past two years, not to mention the past six, while the world has also experienced dramatic changes and rising uncertainties.

Over the past four years, the former US administration tried to drive a wedge between the two US allies and China as part of its regional strategy to contain China. Yet the return of the "America First" Donald Trump administration has prompted a rapid thawing of the relations between China and its two neighbors, a process that commenced at the conclusion of the 2024 US presidential election.

The two countries have strong motives to repair ties with China, their major trading partner and market, as the high cost they paid for joining the former US administration's China-containment strategy proved to be unsustainable.

It is against this backdrop that the two meetings are to be convened, after a series of contacts and exchanges among the three neighbors on multiple bilateral and multilateral occasions over the past months, showing their joint hope that their relations can be put back on the right track for healthy development at an early date.

In the second meeting of a high-level consultation mechanism on people-to-people and cultural exchanges between China and Japan in Beijing on Dec 25, cohosted by Wang and Iwaya, the two sides reached 10 important agreements to promote people-to-people exchanges and cultural, tourism and education cooperation.

In his phone call with ROK Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, one day prior to the meeting with his Japanese counterpart, Wang stressed that China is ready to work with the ROK to promote steady development of the China-ROK strategic partnership, and strengthen coordination with the ROK to jointly keep the global industry and supply chains stable and unimpeded. That was warmly echoed by Cho, who said that Seoul cherishes the current sound momentum of bilateral relations and remains unchanged in its position of promoting the sustainable development of the ROK-China strategic partnership.

So the intensive trilateral and bilateral exchanges among the three neighbors in the Japanese capital this weekend are expected to carry on the positive momentum, providing the three countries with an opportunity to speak in one voice on their shared commitment to win-win cooperation.

The sound development of China-Japan-ROK relations not only serves the common interests of the region, it can also help promote solidarity, cooperation and communication in the world to help counter the confrontation and estrangement that the US administration is trying to promulgate with the view to divide and rule.