Enhanced cooperation

China has been the ROK's largest trade partner for 18 consecutive years, and the ROK is now China's third-largest trading partner and its second-largest source of foreign direct investment.

Last year, bilateral trade exceeded $360 billion, surpassing the ROK's bilateral trade with the United States, Japan and the European Union combined.

Xing Haiming, Chinese ambassador to the ROK, said at a reception on Monday that "there will be no mountains that cannot be conquered" by the two countries as long as they understand each other and "respect and take good care of each other's core concerns and major interests".

When addressing a separate forum of experts and students of the two countries on Tuesday, he noted that "there are no structural contradictions between the two countries", and "there shouldn't be grudges that cannot be resolved".

Senior policy advisers and experts have warned that there are voices in Seoul calling for economic decoupling with China.

Some figures in Seoul said the two countries could follow an approach of keeping bilateral economic cooperation afloat while political tensions remain over thorny issues such as the deployment of the US' THAAD missile system and the CHIP 4 semiconductor and chip alliance.

Han Fangming, deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, said the two countries "do not target any third party and should not be subject to any third party".

Some people's proposal for the ROK to have economic dependence on China and military dependence on the US could turn "a balanced approach" into "a deadlocked dilemma", Han said in an article published recently.