China's '100-year opportunity' could be Seoul's 100-year mistake

AllAfrica

07-07-2025

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 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.
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.
Nor is Kim the only eyebrow-raising pick in Lee's inner circle. A number of new aides built their reputations challenging the US-led bilateral alliance structure, and they now occupy portfolios that will shape trade, technology sharing, and security cooperation.
Many critics of Lee's early moves – both conservative voices inside Korea and alliance stalwarts in Washington – point to a growing pattern: warmer words for Beijing, cooler ones for Washington;
a cabinet peppered with figures who made their names by opposing US military or diplomatic initiatives; and
renewed talk of''strategic ambiguity,' a term frequently used to describe Seoul's foreign policy posture during the late 2010s, particularly under Moon Jae-in.
For those who believe the US-ROK alliance is the region's strategic backbone, Lee's pivot feels like a direct challenge.
Beijing's reaction only amplifies the anxiety. When a congratulatory cable from the Chinese foreign ministry frames Lee's victory in century-long terms, it signals strategic intent. Beijing is not just welcoming a friendly neighbor – it is seizing what it sees as a historic opening created by political turnover in Seoul.
Events in Washington have compounded the unease. On the same day Lee crowned Kim Min-seok, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio abruptly scrapped his visits to South Korea and Japan.
The official explanation cited scheduling pressures and Middle East priorities, yet the symbolism resonated. Korean commentators wondered aloud whether Washington had lost patience with Lee's balancing act.
Without Rubio's shuttle diplomacy, Lee's first face-to-face summit with President Trump is now on ice. That delay could stall negotiations over defense burden-sharing, extended deterrence, and joint supply chain safeguards – issues that cannot wait in a year of North Korean missile tests and intensifying US-China tech wars.
Seoul suddenly looks isolated at precisely the moment when it hoped to triangulate deftly among great powers.
Lee insists that strategic ambiguity is the only rational course for a mid-sized economy living next door to China and across the sea from Japan. Yet history suggests that hedging works best when all sides still trust your intentions.
Since the Korean War, Washington's 'hub-and-spokes' alliance structure in Asia has been bilateral by design, giving the US tight control over alliances – and restraining regional partners from freelancing. The worry now is that Seoul's new leadership may freelance anyway, eroding the spoke that binds the whole wheel together.
Beijing, for its part, understands the material limits of its leverage over Seoul. Yet it also sees opportunity whenever Washington's grip loosens.
If Lee's South Korea decouples from US strategic priorities even modestly – on technology bans, chip supply chains, or security cost sharing – Beijing can claim progress in its long game of prying US allies closer to its own orbit.
Balanced diplomacy is easier to sloganize than to operationalize. A single missile test from Pyongyang can force Seoul back under Washington's wing; a single punitive trade measure from Beijing can make Korean firms beg for American cover.
Any short-term gains from hedging can evaporate if either great-power partner feels betrayed.
Lee's challenge is therefore double-edged. He must show Beijing just enough good will to keep economic ties humming, while proving to Washington that Seoul remains a reliable ally.
Kim Min-seok's appointment, read in Washington as a thumb in the eye, complicates that calculus. Rubio's canceled trip hints that the Trump administration – or any future US administration – could respond in kind, downgrading or delaying high-level engagement.
Beijing may view Lee's presidency as a 'hundred-year opportunity,' but opportunities can sour into hangovers if mismanaged.
Seoul's core national interest remains deterrence against North Korea and access to US markets and technology. China's interest in exploiting cracks in the alliance is explicit in its public diplomacy.
That leaves Lee with a narrow path: leverage China's enthusiasm without alienating the ally whose security guarantee still underwrites South Korea's prosperity.
Lee Jae Myung branded himself a pragmatic centrist who could glide between giants. His early personnel choices suggest something starker: a hidden tilt that Beijing welcomes and Washington distrusts.
China's talk of century-scale opportunities might flatter Seoul's new leadership, but it also warns of the scale on which Beijing plays its games. If Seoul confuses that flattery with partnership, it risks learning – perhaps within this decade, not the next century – why hub-and-spoke alliances have endured, and why strategic ambiguity in a multipolar world can become strategic isolation.
Hanjin Lew, a political commentator specializing in East Asian affairs, is a former international spokesman for South Korean conservative parties.