Brent Scowcroft Center Resident Senior Fellow Robert Manning writes for the Global Times on the recent trilateral meeting between China, Japan, and South Korea, the first since 2012:
The summit was a rare effort to address the major strategic dilemma in East Asia. The region is characterized by two contradictory trends: deepening inter-Asian economic integration but simultaneous growing security confrontation, evident in the East and South China Seas, and reflected in rising defense budgets across the region
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The question now is whether the summit reflected just a temporary thaw of tensions, a trend of reducing distrust and a new realism of pragmatic cooperation, or only a suspension of political differences over history to pursue economic and financial cooperation?