A Chinese state-run think tank expressed the view that South Korea’s concerns sparked by China’s recent withholding of customs clearance for urea exports from China to South Korea can be resolved through friendly negotiations.
“Two years ago, during a urea shortage situation in South Korea, China urgently allocated and exported about 18,000 tons of urea to South Korea at South Korea’s request, which addressed an urgent problem in South Korea,” wrote Xiang Haoyu, a specially appointed research fellow in the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies, China Institute of International Studies, a Chinese foreign affairs think tank, in an op-ed published by the state-run Global Times on Dec. 6.
“From China’s point of view, exporting urea to South Korea is a reciprocal and normal trade practice, but China itself is a country with strong demand for urea, and urea production is easily affected by factors such as raw material supply and price fluctuations,” Xiang said. “It is natural for the Chinese government to use Chinese urea to meet domestic demand first, and unavoidable export control measures are mainly aimed at stabilizing the domestic urea market in China. However, China does not want to see such control negatively affect urea exports to China.”
“The urea shortage itself involves no political reason,” Xiang wrote. “But it is by no means unrelated to factional confrontations and geopolitical clashes currently facing the world. Under the banner of protecting economic security, some U.S. allies have followed the United States in disrupting the global supply chain.”
“More importantly, there has been a shift in South Korea’s foreign policies since the Yoon administration inaugurated in South Korea and has shown a pro-U.S. attitude while maintaining a distance with China. This has led to clashes on some sensitive issues related to China, resulting in a chilly mood in China-South Korean political relations, which inevitably affects trust in bilateral economic and trade cooperation between the two nations,” Xiang said.
To address these concerns, Xiang recommends that South Korea fundamentally establish an objective and rational perception of China and shed new light on the importance of China-South Korea cooperation, “If South Korea can change its strategic thinking, South Korea will not face an extreme situation where it has to choose between China and the United States.”