Camp David Summit The U.S., Japan and South Korea Form Security Pact

As President Biden met with the leaders of Japan and South Korea at Camp David on Friday, no country loomed more prominently in the background than China.

The three-way talks on Friday focused on establishing more secure supply chains that bypass China and figuring out which emerging technologies to try to keep out of the hands of the Chinese military.

The leaders discussed security cooperation, including strengthening missile defense systems and carrying out joint military exercises. The greater military coordination is motivated by China’s growing assertiveness in Asia, particularly around Taiwan and the South China Sea.

China “sits behind” a lot of the issues that will be discussed at the summit, including technological innovations and supply chain resiliency, Sheila A. Smith, a senior fellow for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations said in a panel discussion on the summit on Tuesday.

“When you read through the formal statements, China is going to be in the background,” she said.

During a news conference, Mr. Biden mentioned that China was part of the private discussions, but he did not elaborate on what was said. Mr. Biden emphasized that their summit was not “anti-China.”

China has proved to be a unifying force for the three countries. Japan, South Korea and the United States are increasingly united around the goal of curbing Beijing’s ability to use its economic clout to influence other countries politically and diplomatically. They are also increasingly in agreement on limiting China’s access to advanced technology that may have military uses.

Still, the deep economic ties between China and other East Asian countries present obstacles to those efforts. China is the largest trading partner for both Japan and South Korea and is America’s third largest trading partner.

What’s more, many Japanese and South Korea industries, from consumer electronics to electric vehicle batteries and building materials, are closely tied with suppliers and subsidiaries in China, making it difficult to sever economic ties.

Japanese and South Korean officials and companies have cooperated with U.S.-led efforts to clamp down on the sale of chips and chip-making technology to the Chinese semiconductor industry, but they have also expressed unease about the economic consequences of those moves.

“The semiconductor sanctions are really tough on Korea,” said Susan Shirk, a research professor at the 21st Century China Center at University of California San Diego and the author of “Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise.”

Along with the United States, Australia, Europe and other allied countries, Japan and South Korea have been moving more aggressively to treat China as a geopolitical and economic threat.

China’s growing power has brought Japan and South Korea closer together, despite historical grievances — Japan occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945 — and more recent conflicts, including fierce opposition in Korea to Japan’s plan to release nuclear waste water into the sea.

It remains to be seen how a new entente with Japan, no matter how much it makes sense from a foreign policy standpoint, will be received by the South Korean public, experts said.

“One big question is whether or not Korean business and the Korean public will continue to support this approach, which tilts much more than previously against China and for the United States, and the degree that they’re willing to overlook their historical disputes and resentments against Japan,” Ms. Shirk said.

Evidence has also mounted in recent months that China’s economy is slowing, introducing a new dynamic. The effects of China’s slowing growth are likely to ripple outward toward the country’s largest trading partners, resulting in fewer sales and some downward pressure on prices.

The tightening alliance between Japan, South Korea and the United States already has triggered a harsh response from officials in Beijing. “Those who bet on China’s defeat will surely regret it later,” China’s ambassador to South Korea warned in June.