Japan, China, South Korea foreign ministers meet in Tokyo

(L-R) South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Japanese counterpart Takeshi Iwaya met in Tokyo on Friday – Copyright AFP Ozan KOSE

Natsuko Fukue and Katie Forster

Japan, China and South Korea’s top diplomats hold talks in Tokyo on Saturday, aiming to bolster cooperation at a time when US trade tariffs are looming over the region.

The meeting follows a trilateral summit in May in Seoul where the neighbours agreed to deepen trade ties.

On the eve of the gathering, Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya had dinner with his South Korean and Chinese counterparts Cho Tae-yul and Wang Yi.

They then paid a courtesy call to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who said the nations have “significant influence and responsibilities for regional peace and prosperity”.

“Although difficult problems sometimes arise because we are neighbouring countries, Japan hopes to engage in dialogues including on issues of concern and build a future-oriented cooperative relationship through pragmatic diplomacy,” Ishiba told the ministers.

Climate change, ageing populations and trade were among the topics to be discussed, as well as how to work together on disaster relief and science and technology, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters.

The ministers aim to agree on arranging a trilateral summit within months, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported.

They will also hold bilateral talks Saturday, while Japan and China will have their first so-called “high-level economic dialogue” in six years.

“China-Japan relations are currently showing a trend of improvement and development,” Mao said.

One topic Iwaya highlighted as important ahead of the talks was China’s imports of Japanese seafood, which it halted in 2023 after Japan began releasing treated wastewater from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean.

China said in September it would “gradually resume” the imports, but this has yet to begin.

– Tariff talk –

China and to a lesser extent South Korea and Japan have been hit by tariffs put in place by US President Donald Trump in recent weeks.

Patricia M. Kim, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that while “trilateral dialogues have been ongoing for over a decade”, this round “carries heightened significance” due to the new US position.

“Their leaders are under growing pressure to diversify their options and to seek alternative economic opportunities,” she told AFP.

“As the three biggest economies in East Asia, it’s not surprising that they would look to each other for opportunities,” Kim said.

Beijing “has been working actively to improve relations with other major and middle powers amid growing frictions with the United States”, she said.

The summit in May was the countries’ first top-level talks in five years and saw the group reaffirm their goal of a denuclearised Korean peninsula, in reference to nuclear-armed North Korea.

Seoul and Tokyo typically take a stronger line against North Korea than China, which remains one of Pyongyang’s most important allies and economic benefactors.

“The upcoming meeting is expected to prioritise economic issues in the wake of the Trump administration’s hard push to raise import tariffs,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies.

“With that in mind, the issue of North Korea may be addressed, but it is unlikely to be a top priority.”