Explaining China’s Cautious Responses to the Strategic Choices of the Yoon Administration

The Republic of Korea has long sought to balance its relationship with the United States and China. While the ROK had once experienced retaliation from China when it tried to align closer with the United States, the Yoon Suk-Yeol administration has made a strategic choice to do so openly without suffering any explicit retaliation of the kind that followed the THAAD dispute in 2016. This paper attempts to explain why Beijing is refraining from explicit retaliatory measures against the ROK by analyzing the factors that have constrained China’s choices. It argues that despite evident Chinese concerns over the ROK’s strategic alignment with the United States through groupings like the IPEF and collaboration with NATO, China has not explicitly retaliated against the ROK due to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s personal preoccupation with China’s domestic politics and economic issues in addition to a set of diplomatic priorities that exclude the ROK for the time being and some measure of recognition that retaliation can be counterproductive. This paper concludes by arguing that Beijing will not economically retaliate against the ROK unless it directly infringes on China’s core national interests. While there is a broad range of nominally core national interests where China responds rhetorically, there are fewer over which it retaliates with material measures. Therefore, countries facing potential economic retaliation from China over their foreign policy choices must understand the factors that actually compel China to retaliate economically and determine the extent of this retaliation.