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Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea exit their joint press conference following a summit on May 7 at the presidential office in Yongsan, Seoul. (courtesy of the presidential office)

Chinese state media has criticized the recent South Korea-Japan summit by labeling South Korea and Japan “strange bedfellows” heeding US demands to keep China in check.

On Monday, the Chinese state-run Global Times released articles in English and Chinese titled “Kishida’s visit to S. Korea makes Tokyo, Seoul a pair of ‘strange bedfellows’” to criticize the bilateral summit that took place on Sunday.

The gist of the article is that the right-wing Kishida government in Japan is collaborating with the “pro-US and pro-Japan” administration of Yoon Suk-yeol to respond to US demands to contain China.

“Chinese analysts said this kind of frequent exchanges show that under US pressure, Tokyo is using the office term of a South Korean leader who is both extremely pro-US and pro-Japan as a ‘time window’ to further push bloc confrontation in the region to serve US strategic needs of containing China,” the article read.

It went on to claim that “Tokyo is showing support to the Yoon administration for its overwhelming pro-US and pro-Japan policy,” and “Washington and Tokyo both know that as soon as Yoon loses power, they will lose the ‘time window’ to tie South Korea with their hostile strategy against China, Russia and North Korea.”

It also stated that the strengthening of bilateral cooperation is based on conservative forces in both countries. The media interviewed Han Xiandong, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, who argued that Kishida\'s visit to the Seoul National Cemetery on Sunday “is sending a signal — the current close ties between the two countries are based on the ideology shared by the two right-wing parties.”

“In other words,” Han elaborated, “Japan is only friendly to the pro-Japan right-wingers, not to all South Koreans.”

The article’s author also raised criticisms that this bilateral cooperation would not last long due to structural problems.

“Apart from historical problems, Japan and South Korea also have a sovereignty dispute,” the article read, analyzing that the “US\' pressure has neither solved historical problems nor sovereignty disputes between Japan and South Korea, and when Yoon finishes his term, the current progress in reconciliation risks being reversed.”

Liu Jiangyong, the vice dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University stated that Japan and South Korea are “more like a pair of strange bedfellows. They sleep on the same bed under the pressure or driven by some interests, but they will never sincerely cooperate, as they have structural contradictions.”

By Choi Hyun-june, Beijing correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]