President Lee Arrives in Beijing for First State Visit to China in Eight Years

Summit with President Xi Jinping on January 5, Two Months After Gyeongju APEC
Attends First Official Engagement: "Meeting with Overseas Koreans"
Restoring Strategic Dialogue Channels and Expanding Economic Cooperation
Requesting Constructiv

President Lee Jaemyung arrived in Beijing on the 4th (local time) for a summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. This meeting between President Lee and President Xi comes about two months after their previous summit on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Gyeongju in November last year, and marks the first state visit to China by a South Korean president in eight years.

Yonhap News

As his first official engagement, President Lee will attend a dinner meeting with South Korean nationals residing in China. He is expected to listen to their concerns and introduce the Lee administration's policy direction for the new year, as well as support measures for overseas Koreans.

On the morning of the 5th, President Lee will participate in the Korea-China Business Forum. He will engage with leading figures from both countries’ business communities to discuss ways to create new areas of economic cooperation, based on the complementary strengths of both nations’ industries in manufacturing, consumer goods, and services.

Later in the afternoon, President Lee will hold a summit meeting with President Xi. His schedule includes an official welcoming ceremony, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signing ceremony, and a state banquet. Building on the dialogue in Gyeongju where both leaders agreed to fully restore Korea-China relations, the two presidents plan to hold in-depth discussions on practical measures to address pressing issues related to people’s livelihoods and peace facing both countries.

Yonhap News Agency

In this summit, President Lee aims to solidify the political foundation of the strategic cooperative partnership, following the sequence of last June’s summit call, the November meeting in Gyeongju, and this January’s summit in Beijing. He also plans to rebuild strategic dialogue channels to foster trust. In key areas directly affecting people’s daily lives-such as supply chains and investment, the digital economy, ventures and startups, environment and climate, people-to-people exchanges and tourism, and transnational crime response-he has set a goal to achieve tangible results through mutually beneficial, horizontal cooperation that leverages each country’s comparative advantages.

Additionally, under the shared goal of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia, President Lee will call for China’s constructive role and seek to strengthen strategic communication. Finally, he plans to stably manage sensitive issues by making the West Sea a sea of peace and shared prosperity and gradually restoring cultural content exchanges.