China is not the only Asian country looking to the ancient Silk Road as a path to greater economic and political influence. Both Japan and South Korea have their own, albeit more modest, versions of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative. While Seoul and Beijing have expressed public interest in collaborating along the Silk Road, Tokyo remains silent. Will the BRI be a driver for greater integration in Northeast Asia, or will these three nations prefer to follow their own paths eastward?

The confrontation regarding plans for the THAAD system might lead to unbearable consequences if the situation gets worse. The only reasonable course for Washington and Seoul is to abandon the deployment.

China’s ties with the two US allies continue to evolve, as Beijing develops new consensus with Seoul but finds accommodation with Tokyo more challenging. Domestic politics in the US and Japan may cast a shadow on future progress in China’s bilateral relations with both South Korea and Japan.

In early July, South Korea decided to allow the United States to deploy the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. At the heart of this issue is the difference in how China and the United States view the role of South Korea and decisions related to the security and stability of the peninsula.

Following months of assessment by a Joint Working Group, the U.S. Defense Department announced in July that the U.S. Forces Korea Command will station a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea “as a defensive measure to ensure the security of the nation and its people, and to protect alliance military forces from North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile threats.”

Seoul should fully understand the consequences of THAAD in the ROK, reverse the deployment decision and cooperate with countries concerned in an effort to force the DPRK to abandon its nuclear project and mitigate the tense situation in the Korean Peninsula. THAAD will only produce two winners: the U.S. and the DPRK.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has criticized South Korea's move to deploy an advanced U.S. anti-missile defense system to counter threats from North Korea, saying it harmed the foundation of their mutual trust, news reports said on Monday.

The missile-defense deployment will worsen the bifurcation in East Asia, where regional arrangements for economic growth are shaped with China at its core while regional security architecture is set up with the US-centered military alliances as its foundation. Should this contradictory situation evolve, neither regional economic growth nor security could be sustained.

Relations between Tokyo and Seoul have always been somewhat frosty, but recent developments are accentuating the animosity. Obama administration officials continue to press Seoul and Tokyo to resolve their differences on the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute, the comfort women issue, and other grievances. A comprehensive reconciliation between Seoul and Tokyo, U.S. leaders believe, is imperative to facilitate meaningful trilateral cooperation to deal with North Korea’s threatening behavior and China’s looming presence in the region.

President Xi Jingping’s recent visit to South Korea was a rebuff to North Korea’s defiance of China’s warnings not to conduct nuclear or missile tests. If the United States incentivizes the Chinese government to incur the risks of abandoning the North Korean regime, Beijing might be willing to dump Pyongyang and treat Seoul as its future partner on the Peninsula.