Lee’s arrival in Beijing came hours before North Korea launched multiple ballistic missiles.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung this week began his first state visit to China since taking office last June, as Beijing seeks to rally support from Seoul amid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait.
Lee arrived at Beijing Capital International Airport on the afternoon of Jan. 4, kicking off a four-day visit at the invitation of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported. Lee’s visit to China is the first by a South Korean president in six years, it added.
Chinese regime leaders are expected to use the meetings to pressure Lee on issues related to Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views as its own and has threatened to take by force.
Ahead of Lee’s arrival, CCTV aired a 21-minute interview with Lee at the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential office, in which Lee was asked how his administration plans to adhere to Beijing’s “one-China principle.”
The one-China principle is the CCP’s position that there is only one sovereign state under the name China, with the CCP as the sole legitimate government of that China, and that Taiwan is part of that China.
Lee said that the government has “always respected” the one-China policy—which is distinct from Beijing’s one-China principle in that it “acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China”—while highlighting the importance of regional stability.
Taiwan’s official name is the Republic of China.
Lee also said that “there is no change” in South Korea’s position—which aligns with that of the United States, rather than that of the CCP—with regard to the one-China policy.
“Maintaining peace and stability in Northeast Asia, including in the Taiwan Strait, is very important to us,” Lee told China’s state media in Korean.
The South Korean president’s visit came as the CCP seeks to rally international support to isolate Japan, after its verbal threats and economic retaliationsfailed to pressure Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to retract her comments on a hypothetical Taiwan contingency. Takaichi, in response to a parliamentary question in November 2025, said that a naval blockade against Taiwan may constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan. She used a legal term that could enable Japan to mobilize its military.
According to the Pentagon’s latest assessment, the leadership in Beijing still expects to have the capability to conduct a successful invasion of Taiwan by the end of 2027.
Japan’s westernmost tip, Yonaguni, is only 68 miles from Taiwan’s coastline.
Tensions have flared up in the Taiwan Strait after the CCP mobilized its naval, air, and rocket forces to stage one of its most expansive military exercises, encircling Taiwan, last week.
Taiwan’s military assessed that the latest round of Chinese drills came closer to its main island than previous ones. Ten Chinese rockets struck within Taiwan’s 24-nautical-mile contiguous zone, while multiple Chinese naval and coast guard vessels also sailed into the zone, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense.
By Dorothy Li
