China's '100-Year Opportunity' Could Be Seoul's 100-Year Mistake

2025-07-06 10:11:05

(MENAFN- Asia Times) China seems to have a fondness for the number 100. It famously brands the years 1839–1949 as its“century of national humiliation.” That narrative of imposed weakness still fuels nationalist rhetoric at home.

It also finds resonance in Michael Pillsbury's The Hundred-Year Marathon, which argues that Beijing has spent the past century lying low, only to re-emerge with a plan for global hegemony.

So when China's foreign ministry used that same phrase to salute Lee Jae Myung's presidential victory – as“profound changes unseen in a century” – ears perked up in the international community.

Lee's pragmatic veneer

Lee was elected on June 3 promising“pragmatism” and“balanced diplomacy,” code words for equidistance between the United States and China.

That might sound reasonable for a middle power squeezed between its main security guarantor and its largest trading partner. Yet Beijing's exuberance suggests it interprets Lee's promise less as equidistance and more as drift toward China.

If Beijing truly believes Lee's rise represents a“once-in-a-century chance” to reset the strategic chessboard in Northeast Asia, then his personnel choices matter a great deal.

The Kim Min-seok signal

On July 3, barely a month after taking office, Lee appointed Kim Min-seok as prime minister. Even in politicized Seoul, these are fighting words – and not just because Lee bypassed several more senior candidates.

Kim's biography reads like a cautionary tale for anyone who believes alliances are carved in stone. He was once denied a US visa over his alleged role in the violent 1985 occupation of the American Cultural Center in Seoul , a student-led protest widely viewed as anti-American.

Although the US embassy later blamed an“administrative error,” the episode lingers as shorthand for leftist suspicion of Washington – and for Washington's lingering distrust of certain Korean leftists. In the current climate, Lee's decision looks less like pragmatism and more like provocation.

Washington's Korea watchers have taken note. Personnel, after all, is policy. Choosing Kim suggests that Lee values ideological affinity at least as much as alliance management – if not more.

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