Signs of China’s economic strength abound: from the increasing number of Hollywood movies that are designed to pander to Chinese tastes to the political class’s silence in the face of Chinese cyber-aggression. Consider the non-reaction to Beijing’s stunning plundering of OPM personnel data compared with the outcry over the news that the Russian government spent a couple of grand on Black Lives Matter ads. This says as much about China’s economic strength as it does Russia’s comparative weakness. America simply lacks the leverage with which to confront the Chinese.
One country that feels China’s dominance more acutely than most is South Korea. Not only is China by far Korea’s largest trading partner, but the country’s retailers have grown increasingly reliant on Chinese tourists to drive sales as domestic consumption has stagnated.
Or at least that had been the case until earlier this year, when the South Korean government made the decision to deploy the U.S.-operated THAAD missile defense system in a bid to protect itself from North Korea. Beijing reacted furiously (it claims that THAAD is a threat to China), and has essentially blockaded South Korea ever since. Cruises from China to South Korea have all but stopped. South Korean retailers in China have been bullied into closing. Sales of Hyundai cars in China have tanked. The irony is that THAAD deployment is partially China’s fault: Had Beijing been more proactive in reining in North Korea, the South would have felt less need to protect itself.
President Trump will be decamping to Asia early next month. South Koreans already feel slighted—the president will be spending two nights in Japan and only one in Korea, which is being viewed as a bit of an insult in a country that feels squeezed between China and Japan. When he visits Beijing, Trump reportedly is planning to confront Chinese president Xi Jinping about trade policies and the enforcement of North Korea sanctions. That’s all to the good.
But the president should also take Xi to task over his decision to sanction the other Korea—the wrong one. The blockade not only represents bullying of a U.S. ally by country that claims to want to be responsible global stakeholder, but also flies in the face of China’s supposed support for the primacy of national sovereignty. Why is it punishing South Korea for a decision that it made for itself?
But perhaps most importantly: THAAD is a U.S. system and Trump should rise to its defense.
And then, on the way back to America, perhaps he can stop in Seoul for an extra night.
