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US President Joe Biden stands with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol for a photo on May 21 ahead of their trilateral summit on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima, Japan. (Yonhap)

China criticized a planned trilateral South Korea-US-Japan summit scheduled for Aug. 18 at Camp David in Maryland as an attempt to create a small Northeast Asian version of NATO.

In an opinion piece published Monday under the title “Camp David summit could be dangerous for Japan, South Korea,” China’s government-run Global Times newspaper wrote that the meeting was “likely to mark the beginning of building a trilateral military cooperation system between the US, Japan and South Korea.”

“On the surface, the US, Japan, and South Korea are under the banner of ‘countering North Korean’s growing nuclear threat,’ but in fact, it has always been US' desire to build a ‘mini-NATO-style’ trilateral military alliance in Northeast Asia,” it insisted.

The newspaper went on to say that while trilateral military cooperation has been considered “almost impossible” in the past because of historical conflicts between South Korea and Japan, the US has been doing its best to encourage South Korea to make concessions to Japan since the Yoon Suk-yeol administration took office, while touting rapprochement between Seoul and Tokyo as a “fundamental change.”

The piece warned that cooperation among those three countries is “unlikely to reassure other countries in the region.”

Given their profound connections to the security and prosperity of Northeast Asia, the paper argued, the choices made by Japan and South Korea will leave “completely different footnotes in history.”

“It is hoped that these two countries will carefully consider their actions before proceeding,” it said.

In remarks published in the Global Times’ English edition, Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences research fellow and Korean Peninsula expert Lu Chao said that the US was attempting to further involve itself in Asia-Pacific regional issues in order to contain China.

Lu also warned that this military and security interference would worsen the regional political situation and increase the risk of conflict and friction.

By Choi Hyun-june, Beijing correspondent

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