German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul arrived in Japan yesterday, as part of a trip that will also take him to Indonesia. He is seeking to assure these and other states in the region of German support against China, whether or not they have asked for such “support.” In a declaration on arriving in Tokyo, Wadephul accused China of “fueling regional tensions in Asia” with an “increasingly aggressive behavior in the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China Seas [which] also has implications for us in Europe: fundamental principles of our global coexistence are at stake here.”
China, he went on to claim, is a “threat to democracy and the rule of law in the region” and “that it repeatedly threatens, more or less openly, to unilaterally change the status quo and shift the borders in its favor,” Wadephul said.
