China’s Premier Li Qiang hailed a “new beginning” in its relationship with South Korea and Japan as the three countries pledged to revive talks on a free trade agreement.“We will keep discussions for speeding up negotiations for a trilateral free trade agreement,” South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Li said in a joint statement after their summit in Seoul on Monday.

The summit, arranged at short notice and the first of its kind since 2019, came amid disquiet in Beijing over Seoul and Tokyo’s participation in sweeping US export controls designed to restrict Chinese access to cutting-edge chip technologies, as well as their burgeoning military co-operation with the US.

Li, the former Shanghai party chief who became Chinese premier last year, said on Monday that the meeting marked “both a restart and a new beginning” in relations between Beijing and Washington’s east Asian allies.