OCT 30 — The road to peace and rapprochement is always a long one.

This Sunday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will meet in Seoul for trilateral talks.

The current warming of relations among the three Northeast Asian neighbours is unlikely to resolve most outstanding issues in the region. But it is a start.

For one thing, it offers a window of opportunity for their leaders to meet and talk in a business-like manner, rather than the chest-beating nationalistic responses of the past few years that have seen skirmishes between maritime coastguards and fishermen, helicopter landings by politicians on disputed islands and icy-cold poses during leadership summits in Northeast Asia.

Most importantly, it is better than not talking to each other at all. Japanese and Chinese leaders did not hold leadership summits for three years from 2011 to 2014, while top leaders in Seoul and Tokyo did not meet formally from 2013 to 2015.

Indeed, up until the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Beijing late last year, diplomacy among Northeast Asia’s top leaders depended on informal delegation meetings, closed-door informal talks and corridor conversations.

A lot, therefore, is at stake at this weekend’s trilateral meeting. If it is played right, it could lead to the three countries coming together to tackle common challenges such as the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, as well as revive the trilateral free-trade agreement (FTA).

Since 2012, representatives from the three countries have had eight rounds of negotiations for the FTA agreement, focusing on market access and liberalisation in trade and investments, but they have achieved little headway.

The negotiations require a political atmosphere conducive to achieving a breakthrough, with the past eight rounds coinciding with periods of rocky trilateral relations.

The previous time Japan, China and South Korea enjoyed Northeast Asian fraternity was during the leadership of Japanese Prime Ministers Yasuo Fukuda (2007-08) and Yukio Hatoyama (2009-10). They were considered dovish leaders who built rapport with then Chinese President Hu Jintao.

During that period, South Korean Presidents Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Myung-bak were also known to be publicly supportive of camaraderie among neighbours. All three countries cherished the closer integration of their economies through currency swaps.

The past few years, however, have seen a period of tumult among the trio. Relations started fraying between Japan and China when Beijing reacted strongly to Japan’s nationalisation of the Senkaku Islands (known as Diaoyu Islands to the Chinese) during the Yoshiko Noda administration (2011-12).

Relations were also strained when South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited another set of disputed islands (known as Takeshima in Japanese and Dokdo in Korean) that is under Korean administration but claimed by Japan. Historical memories of the Pacific War became the common cauldron that at times threatened to bring the relations among all three countries to a boiling point.

Warmer relations

More recently, simmering issues appear to have cooled, with the relationship reset button once again pressed to engineer some form of mutually acceptable detente in the region. With the winding down of war-anniversary activities, the three countries have signalled their desire to hold talks.

These may be attributable to: The relaxation of anti-Japanese rhetoric by the Chinese government after their leaders met last November; the winding down of World War II 70^th anniversary events, which reached a finale on Sept 3; and Washington’s calls for the major Northeast Asian leaders to talk to one another, particularly in maritime disputes issues. Washington is particularly pleased with the prospect of Japan and South Korea communicating with each other again, something that US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel reiterated during Park’s recent visit to the US.

The background work behind the trilateral summit started in mid-October, when ranking diplomat Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi (formerly Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs and someone familiar with Japan) visited Japan in mid-October and met Japanese Prime Minister Abe in a meeting that overran the original planned schedule.

They followed up by setting up a hotline to prevent accidents at air and sea, particularly near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands under Japanese administration, but claimed by China. This idea was first broached during Abe’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing last November.

Similarly, the highly-irregular situation of a Korean President not having any leadership summits with the Japanese Prime Minister since 2013 may also come to an end. They may also agree to hold the trilateral summit in Japan next year. If this happens, it will be the first time that Chinese Premier Li and Park have stepped foot on Japanese soil for an official visit since Abe took over.

The decision to hold a trilateral summit and issue a joint statement to cooperate on North Korea-related issues have been forged by the governments of three strongly conservative or nationalistic leaders whose fathers had similarly conservative and nationalistic views.

Park’s father was the late strongman President and former General Park Chung-hee.

Abe’s father, Shintaro Abe (a former Foreign Minister), and maternal grandfather, Nobosuke Kishi (a former Prime Minister), are leading members of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Xi’s father was former Vice-Premier and Chinese Communist Party Politburo member Xi Zhongxun. With strongman Xi Jinping’s support, the Xi-Li team will be fielding Premier Li Keqiang for this trilateral summit.

It showed that, while the three top leaders may talk tough and take a strong stance on relations with neighbours, they are pragmatic when it comes to the need to discuss issues that affect all three states.

To get the three top leaders together for the trilateral did not come easy and credit goes to the behind-the-scenes work of a large number of their diplomats.

These Northeast Asian leadership summit meetings are extremely important, not only to send messages of detente and rapprochement for their respective domestic audiences.

In the practical realm, with the United States and Japan and other participants reaching agreement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal, which will create the golden standard of FTAs in the region, there may just be a sense of urgency among the three Northeast Asian leaders — perhaps especially on China’s part — to start re-looking the possibility of a trilateral FTA (sometimes known as the CJK or China-Japan-Korea free trade agreement).

Still, Northeast Asian relations tend to follow a cyclical pattern, with periods of relative calm punctuated by steep downturns in relations caused by specific incidents.

It is prudent to be realistic about this round of detente and hope for the emergence of a regional mechanism or platform that better manages disagreements rather than expect a permanent solution to those issues. — TODAY

* Lim Tai Wei is a Senior Lecturer at SIM University and Research Fellow Adjunct at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute.

 ** This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Malay Mail Online.