Vice President Kamala Harris used her tour of Japan and South Korea this week to issue belligerent statements directed at China, accusing it of “breaking the rules” of the international order and continuing to threaten Taiwan. Harris was in Japan to attend the state funeral of the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and to meet with officials in that country and later in South Korea.
She met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who was in Tokyo for the funeral, and later with South Korea’s Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and President Yun Suk-yeol. When she was visiting the DMZ between North and South Korea, Harris appeared confused that her host was not the “Republic of North Korea"!
Speaking yesterday aboard the USS Howard naval destroyer in Yokosuka, Japan she warned that the “rules and norms” of the international order are “under growing threat” from China, and then provocatively warned Beijing that “we will continue to oppose any unilateral change to the status quo and we will continue to support Taiwan’s self-defense, consistent with our longstanding policies … and the United States will continue to deepen our unofficial ties.” That is, “unofficially,” the One China policy doesn’t exist.
