Todd Bishop
Suddenly, one-fifth of the 21st century has passed. Looking at the past few years, the ups and downs of international politics, the changes in continental Europe, the ups and downs of British-European relations, major changes in American politics, the turmoil of the Middle East situation, the shift of the Asian geography, the stupid movement of the African economy, and even the changing role of China It is a sign of the coming of a world of great contention. The international political arena in the next 10 years will only witness more changes than in the past 10 years.
Looking at the short-term prospects, the US president’s impeachment is chaotic, and the final chapter of Brexit is inconclusive. China and the United States frequently have frictions in Hong Kong, trade, 5G, and the Taiwan Straits. With the People ’s Daily on November 18, Xi Jinping ’s visit to Brazil ’s BRICS tour is called the “final work of this year ’s visit”, and Trump is unlikely to visit China this year. The original expectations of hosting the China-US summit this year were given up, and people will also look Looking forward to next year.
However, before this year and even the end of the 2010s, there is still something to be done in international politics in this last month. Among the many things that will happen in the next 5 weeks, the ones that have the most wide-ranging impact (especially for Asia) include: the US-DPRK nuclear negotiations, the first phase of the China-US trade negotiations, and the China-Japan-Korea Leadership Summit.
The first is the North Korean nuclear issue. It can be said that the Korean peninsula will definitely resurrect its gunpowder during December this year due to the limited progress of the US-DPRK negotiations.
Between 2016 and 2017, North Korea successfully tested and detonated atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs several times. In September and November 2017, it successfully tested and fired intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach the United States. The US-DPRK nuclear negotiations have since quickly moved into the fast lane. The three historic US-DPRK meetings in Singapore, Hanoi, Vietnam, and Panmunjom at the border between North Korea and South Korea in the past two years have ushered in a fundamental turning point and a rare opportunity to resolve the relationship between the two countries and the security situation in Northeast Asia. However, even if Trump shows sincerity in peace talks, and even if the DPRK is ready for dialogue, the specific negotiations remain stuck in “North Korea abandons nuclear unilaterally, and then talks about sanctions” or “North Korea gradually abandons nuclear, and the US gradually releases economic sanctions. Between the two options.
In April this year, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un set “the end of this year” as the deadline for US-DPRK negotiations. As the “deadline” approaches, North Korea is becoming increasingly impatient. North Korea ’s chief nuclear negotiator Kim Myong-gi publicly stated on November 14 that North Korea rejected the U.S. ’s proposal to hold talks in December because the U.S. ’s proposal was “bad-hearted,” just to allow North Korea to be comforted, so that North Korea could easily pass The United States has set a deadline, “We are not willing to negotiate like this.”
According to South Korea’s “North Korea Daily” reported on November 26, Kim Jong-un recently went to the coastal artillery force near Baekdae Island and ordered a shelling equivalent to “frontal violation of the 9.19 South Korean military agreement”;
On November 20, Stephen Biegun, Special Representative of the US Department of State for North Korea Policy, told the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that North Korea requires the United States to show greater flexibility in nuclear negotiations by the end of the year, “I can imagine that we might See more provocative actions before the start of this round of diplomatic process or will return partly. “
North Korean official media “Korean Central News Agency” reported on the 28th that North Korea fired two short-range missiles into the east coast waters that day in order to check the combat applications of the weapon and prove the country’s “military and technical advantages and solid reliability.” “Yonhap News Agency” analyzed in the report on the 29th that the ultra large rocket artillery of the Korean army has entered the final stage of verifying performance.
It can be seen from the North Korean side’s repeated shouting over the past few months that although the United States has the positive factor that Trump hopes to achieve “significant diplomatic achievements”, due to domestic and international political realities, the United States cannot give North Korea what it wants Sanctions were relaxed, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Adviser John Bolton did not uphold the same sincerity as Trump in their previous negotiations with North Korea.
At present, it appears that this dilemma between the United States and North Korea cannot be changed during December, and Trump himself, who has been trapped in the domestic impeachment case, the upcoming US elections, and the China-U.S. Negotiations, cannot free up enough energy to deal with the United States. North Korea. Therefore, the North Korean nuclear issue is bound to become a new international political tipping point in December, and Bigan’s pessimistic remarks are not alarmist.
This also involves the second major event in December, the China-US trade negotiations. If it is said that the North Korean nuclear issue will “inevitably” come to a close again in December, the first phase of the China-US trade negotiations will be signed with “probability” in December.
On November 26, US President Donald Trump said that the first phase of the US-China trade agreement negotiations is at the “final juncture”, which is more positive than his comments a few days ago that “China has not accelerated its pace”.
On the same day, Liu He and Robert Lighthizer, the two leaders of China-US high-level economic and trade negotiations, conducted the third official call since the China-US talks in October, which is different from the previous call (November 16). What’s more, in a statement after the call, the Chinese side stated that the two parties “reached a consensus on the resolution of relevant issues and agreed to maintain communication on the remaining matters in the first stage of agreement negotiation”.
After the news of the call was released, White House consultant Kellyanne Conway said on November 26 that the United States and China were very close to the first phase of the trade agreement. She also said that the agreement was reached step by step because it was a huge and historic trade agreement.
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, also said on the same day that he believed that the first-phase agreement with China might be reached before the end of the year, and revealed that China had invited Lighthizer and Treasurer Mu Steven Mnuchin’s visit to China, the two also said that “if there is an expectation of a real agreement, they will be willing to go.”
According to Reuters later, although the US Trade Representative Office and the Treasury Department did not give a clear answer to this, a source familiar with the negotiation process said that U.S. officials may visit Beijing after the Thanksgiving holiday, which is sooner than The week of December 2.
This website November 21 “The first phase of the trade agreement is expected to be signed in December or January. An article analyzes that even if there are some things that have not been finalized in the China-U.S. Negotiation process, such as tariff reductions, agricultural product purchases, and how many state-owned enterprises, finance, and intellectual property rights reform plans will be written in the first-phase agreement, but these factors Are not enough to affect the signing of the first phase of the trade agreement, and the first phase of the agreement signed by the Chinese and US trade representatives will most likely meet the needs of the US and China markets, before the Christmas and New Year holidays in December, or 1 Signed before the Chinese New Year holiday in January-according to news analysis of the past week, the possibility of December is increasing.
This is not only because of recent positive news of this kind, but also because both the Chinese and American governments need to sign their first-phase agreements to achieve their own surface and substantive demands. The surface appeal of the White House is to reduce the trade deficit. The actual appeal is Trump ’s personal image and the 2020 presidential election. The surface appeal of Zhongnanhai is the withdrawal of tariffs imposed by the two countries. The actual appeal is to be maintained through continuous agreement and continuous contact. The stability of China-US relations. At the same time, both markets need to gain some confidence before the holidays.
The third thing that will happen in December is the China-Japan-Korea Leadership Summit in Chengdu, China, around Christmas.
The China-Japan-ROK Leadership Summit has been held 7 times so far, and was first held in Dazaifu, Fukuoka, Japan in 2008. It was attended by the Prime Minister of Japan, the Chinese Prime Minister and the President of South Korea. It played an important role in determining the political and economic cooperation and regional issues of the three East Asian countries. . However, over the past 11 years, the meeting mechanism of the leader has been interrupted several times due to the impact of the China-Japanese Diaoyu Islands incident (the Japanese termed the Senkaku Islands), the China-Korean Thaad Anti-missile System (THAAD) incident, and Park Geun-hye’s impeachment. This year, Japan-South Korea relations have faced a change due to the trough.
On October 30, 2018, the Supreme Court of South Korea ruled that Japan must compensate Japanese compulsory laborers during the Japanese peninsula, and therefore sought compensation from Japanese companies such as Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The court applied for the seizure of these companies’ assets in Korea. This incident is the beginning of this round of conflict between Japan and South Korea. On December 20, 2018, the P-1 maritime patrol aircraft belonging to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces 4th Aviation Group was repeatedly targeted by the Korean Navy destroyer radar within a few minutes while cruising in the airspace of the Japanese exclusive economic zone near the Noto Peninsula. Japan-South Korea relations continue to slide. The situation continued to ferment, and even the two countries began to implement a series of export control restrictions in July this year.
The continuing outbreak of bilateral differences has repeatedly hindered the cooperation planning of the three countries, such as the China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Area. The international political and economic landscape is undergoing drastic changes. Can the major economies “group together for heating” and connect with industries to make markets, funds, technology, personnel and other resources more efficiently used, thereby further improving economic momentum and improving life? Conditions, these are increasingly imminent.
On the other hand, the conflict between Japan and South Korea also directly affected the strategic layout of the United States in East Asia. The United States, Japan, and South Korea military alliance that the United States has been advocating has been blocked because of the historical dispute between Japan and South Korea, and the information sharing channels established by the United States through the United States today have also been seriously damaged. For this reason, the United States has continued to try to mediate relations between the two countries in the past few months, but has been unsuccessful.
Under this circumstance, whether the leaders of Japan and South Korea can relax their relations in Chengdu has brought additional attention to this China-Japan-Korea Leadership Conference. It is worth expecting that on November 22, the two countries “conditionally extended” the Japan-South Korea Military Intelligence Protection Agreement (GSOMIA), which opened the possibility for dialogue. Since November 25, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Tokyo After meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Abe, Abe subsequently confirmed that he would visit China and attend the December China-Japan-Korea Leadership Summit. On December 28, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs also confirmed Wang Yi ’s schedule for visiting Korea from December 4th to 5th. It is estimated that President Wen Zaiyin will determine the arrangements for attending the China-Japan-Korea Leadership Meeting.
Therefore, one is the prospect of a resurgence of the Korean Peninsula crisis, one is the signing of the first phase of China-US trade agreement, and the other is the prospect of easing relations between Japan and South Korea. For those concerned about the prospects of international politics, these three are Before the world enters 2020, it is worth noting.
