US Secretary of State Tony Blincoln attends the House Foreign Relations Committee held at the Washington DC Federal Capitol on the 10th (local time) to explain the policies that the Joe Biden administration will focus on. Washington AFP=Yonhap News
The US, Japan, India, and Australia held a’Quad’ summit on the 12th (U.S. time) to check China, followed by a 2+2 meeting with the U.S. and Japan’s foreign ministers and defense ministers held on the 16th (2+2 between the US and Japan). In the talks), a statement that clearly criticizes China is expected to come out.
According to the Yomiuri Shimbun and Jiji News on the 14th, it is expected that China will be directly specified in the announcement after the US-Japan 2+2 talks to be held in Tokyo on the 16th. It is unusual for the two countries to check China’s country by directly pointing to it in the announcement of the talks. A joint statement released after the Quad Summit on the 12th was aimed at China, but did not specify it, stating that “we will strive for the Indo-Pacific region that is free and open and not repressed by force.”
What the Japanese government is particularly elaborating on is the issue of the Senkaku Islands (Chinese name Diaoyudao). The announcement will criticize China for repeating territorial invasions around this area, and will state that Article 5 of the US-Japan Security Treaty, which stipulates US defense obligations against Japan, applies to the Senkaku Islands. China’s maritime police law, which recently recognized the use of weapons such as China’s maritime borders, is also considering the inclusion of a content stating that “we share serious concerns”.
The US administration is strengthening its borders on China, calling it “the greatest geopolitical ordeal of the 21st century” (Secretary of State Tony Blincoln). However, during the previous Democratic Party’s Barack Obama administration, the Japanese government was uneasy because it had taken an appeased stance against China in consideration of solving the problem of climate change.
Following the quad summit and the US-Japan 2+2 talks, the first face-to-face summit between US President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will be held in early April. The summit is being coordinated to be held at the White House on the 9th of next month (Eastern Time in the United States), and Prime Minister Suga plans to leave Japan on the 8th and return to Korea on the 10th. The Japanese government is planning to shorten Prime Minister Suga’s stay in the United States as short as possible as a countermeasure against the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19). It is known that foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi will not be included in the entourage by reducing the number of visitors to the US as much as possible.
At the same time, the joint moves between the US and Japan to check China are expected to continue, with four’quad’ countries plus France and five countries conducting joint maritime drills. Yomiuri said that the military forces and self-defense forces of these nations entered into final coordination in early April to conduct joint maritime exercises in the Bay of Bengal off the coast of India for the first time, according to Indian officials. Four quad nations had a joint maritime drill in the Indian Ocean in November last year, and France has territories or bases in the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, so they are concerned about China’s advance into the ocean, Yomiuri reported.
Tokyo= Jinjoo Choi Correspondent [email protected]
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