In South Korea, will growing anti-China views come between Seoul and Beijing?

Lee, who asked to be identified by her initials, is among some 500,000 South Koreans who have signed the online petition calling on the government to cancel the tourist attraction, which has been planned since 2017 and aims to showcase Chinese culture, including traditional Chinese gardens.

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Under an online petition system operated by the presidential Blue House, the government is required to issue a response to any petition that attracts at least 200,000 supporters. 

"We have already faced China's Northeast Project that attempted to take away our ancient history, and more recently, distorted historical facts about our history have been featured on Chinese search engines," said Lee, referring to a controversial initiative by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that has been accused of rewriting history to include ancient Korean kingdoms as part of China.

Amid a growing backlash, the Gangwon provincial government has stressed that the project is a tourist attraction, not a residential development for Chinese, and has not been supported with public funds. Authorities have also dismissed claims that the project would be built on top of a historical site, noting the actual site of the development is more than 20km away.

"We decided to join the project in hopes that it would bring benefits to our tourism and agricultural economy," said a spokeswoman for the provincial government. "We want to emphasise that we were not investors in this project."

Views like Lee's are on the rise in South Korea, where public perceptions of China are increasingly at odds with the foreign policy of the centre-left Moon Jae-in administration, which has strived to foster friendly relations with Beijing even as it relies on Washington for its security within an alliance forged in the aftermath of the Korean war.

"If [Chinese President] Xi Jinping thought that he would have the opportunity to pull South Korea away from the US with its aggressive actions, he is gravely mistaken," said Yang Uk, an adviser to South Korea's Ministry of Defence who lectures at Hannam University. 

Yang predicted South Koreans would become increasingly less tolerant of China if it continued being "arrogant to neighbouring countries".

Nearly six out of 10 South Koreans see South Korea and China, the country's largest trading partner, as mostly rivals, according to a survey released last week by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

In the same poll, South Koreans' perception of China had an average rating of 3.1, on a 0-10 scale where 10 is most favourable, compared to 4.8 in 2019 - putting it in similar company to North Korea (2.8) and Japan (3.2), the country's main security challenge and former colonial ruler, respectively.

Other recent polling has pointed to the spike in anti-China sentiment being especially dramatic among the young. According to data released by the Pew Research Centre in October last year, 82 per cent of South Koreans aged 30-49 held a negative view of China, followed by 80 per cent of those aged 18-29. Among South Koreans aged 50 and above, the figure was 68 per cent.

Amid heated exchanges over Baidu's encyclopaedia entries, which can be edited by ordinary internet users, Chinese ambassador to South Korea Xing Haiming in February insisted the controversy did not represent mainstream public opinion and the sides should "enhance the friendship between China and South Korea".

"They grew up in an environment and surroundings that are not friendly or amicable to China at all," Choo said. "They themselves have also experienced more negatives than positives with China, such as microdust, since they were born."

"People perceive China as a bully," he said.

Lim Jin-hee, a professor at the Korean Chinese Relations Institute at Wonkwang University in Iksan, about 180km southwest of Seoul, said sensational media reporting had played a role in the deteriorating perceptions of China. 

"Sensational news stories with one-sided and distorted narratives have brought on unnecessary rage and contempt towards China," Lim said.

The souring public mood raises questions about the long-term sustainability of Seoul's efforts to forge closer ties with Beijing, following a major chill that followed its decision to deploy the US missile defence system THAAD on its soil in 2016.

But Yang, the Defence Ministry adviser, said Washington could not take it for granted that Seoul would embrace an even closer security alliance or join its efforts to check Beijing.

He pointed out that South Korea had received little support from its ally when China led an unofficial boycott of the country's tourism industry in apparent retaliation for the deployment of THAAD. "The US needs to gain that confidence from our people," he said.

While other US allies that depend on China for trade have also sought to balance ties between the competing superpowers, Moon's administration has been especially careful to avoid touching on issues considered sensitive by Beijing.

Unlike Japan, South Korea has not joined international criticism of Beijing's increasing control of Hong Kong or its controversial treatment of ethnic minority Uygurs in Xinjiang. Seoul has also not joined Tokyo and other US allies such as Australia and Britain in banning Huawei Technologies Co from its 5G networks, leaving the decision to use the tech giant's equipment in the hands of telecoms firms, and has offered signals of support for Beijing's signature Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure drive billed as a revival of historic cross-continental trade routes.

After a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi earlier this month in Xiamen, South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong reiterated Seoul's hope for Chinese President Xi to visit South Korea "as early as possible", once the coronavirus had subsided. 

Jae-Hung Chung, a research fellow at the Seoul-based Sejong Institute, said South Korea's ruling party elites, many of whom got their start in politics resisting US-backed dictatorships during the 1980s, had a fundamentally different world view than the next generations.

"They still have socialist minds, anti-American tendencies, and progressive world views," Chung said, adding that next year's presidential election would be "an opportunity for substantial change in public policy".

Lim, the Wonkwang University professor, said South Korea-China relations would inevitably be affected "as the public is what sways politics and economics".

For South Koreans such as Lee, the illustrator, China's tightly-controlled model of governance simply makes it difficult to trust. 

"Its motto of 'One China' has shown imperialistic tendencies, and its citizens seem to be forced to align with the state or collapse under it due to the state's suppression," she said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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