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China and Its Neighbors, Part 4: South Korea

For decades, the United States and Japan have been the main economic force in Asia. Many say China will soon take over that role.
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For decades, the United States and Japan have been the main economic force in Asia. Many say China will soon take over that role.

South Korea's links with China go back centuries, but in the 1950s the two were on opposite sides in the Korean War. Today, China is starting to have increasingly more in common with South Korea than its communist neighbor in the North. In the fourth part of a series examining China's relationship with its neighbors, NPR's Rob Gifford reports on a China craze that's going on in Seoul. China's economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. And with that prosperity comes power. Some in Asia are calling China the new America. But others worry that South Korea's economic infatuation with China has blinded Koreans to Beijing's longterm strategic aims.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Rob Gifford is the NPR foreign correspondent based in Shanghai.