Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s visit to the White House yesterday made him the first foreign leader to meet in person with President Biden. After their meeting, they announced that the two countries agreed to work closely together to assure “a free and independent Indo-Pacific” and to collaborate on technology development, particularly in the fields of AI and quantum computing, areas in which China has achieved dramatic progress.
The fact that their bilateral meeting contained policies directed against China drew a response from the Chinese Embassy in Washington and the Foreign Ministry in Beijing. The Embassy said in a press release, “These comments [in the Joint Statement] have gone far beyond the scope of normal development of bilateral relations. They are harmful to the interests of a third party, to mutual understanding and trust between regional countries, and to peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific. It cannot be more ironic that such attempts at stoking division and building blocs against other countries is put under the banner of ‘free and open.’ The scheme of the U.S. and Japan goes against the trend of the times and the will of people in the region. Though it is designed to undermine others, it will only end up hurting themselves.” http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/zmgxss/t1869607.htm
Suga also indicated that he would be traveling to India and to the Philippines after his Washington visit, with the assumed objective of bringing these countries closer to a stance of opposition to China. Japan has also become more vocal in its involvement in the Taiwan issue, something that could blow back against Tokyo in a major way, since they occupied Taiwan as “booty” from their victory over China during the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894. And Japan running naval patrols in the South China Sea could send a warning to some of the countries in the region that have not seen this since the Second World War. Japan also held its first two-plus-two meeting with Germany of both Foreign and Defense Ministers, since the Second World War, trying to bring Germany into the “freedom of navigation” operations in the South China Sea. They discussed conducting joint drills in the region as Germany prepares to send a frigate to the area.
Nonetheless, China is Japan’s leading trade partner, representing over 20% of Japan’s trade, while Japan is the largest foreign investor in China. While Suga will say things and take limited actions which maintain their close relations with the U.S., they have rejected the huge pressure from Washington to impose sanctions or other such insane policies against China.
