US President Joe Biden was yesterday scheduled to depart on a six-day trip to South Korea and Japan, aiming to build rapport with the two nations’ leaders while also sending an unmistakable message to China: Russia’s faltering invasion of Ukraine should give Beijing pause about its own saber-rattling in the Pacific.
Biden is set to meet newly elected South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Their talks are to touch on trade, increasing resilience in the global supply chain, growing concerns about North Korea’s nuclear program and the explosive spread of COVID-19 in that country.
While in Japan, Biden is also to meet with fellow leaders of the Indo-Pacific strategic alliance known as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a group that includes Australia, India and Japan.
Photo: AFP
“We think this trip is going to put on full display President Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy and then it will show in living color, the United States can at once lead the free world in responding to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and that at the same time chart a course for effective, principled American leadership and engagement in a region that will define much of the future of the 21st century,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
The war in eastern Europe has created a sense of urgency about China among major US allies in the Pacific. Many have come to see the moment as their own existential crisis — one in which it is critical to show China it should not try to seize contested territory through military action.
China’s military assertiveness has grown over the course of Biden’s presidency, with its provocative actions frequently putting the region on edge.
Last month, China held military drills around Taiwan after a group of US lawmakers arrived for talks in Taipei. Late last year, it stepped up sorties into Taiwan’s air space.
Japan has also reported frequent intrusions by China’s military vessels into Japanese territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. The uninhabited islets are controlled by Japan, but claimed by Taiwan and China, which call them the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台).
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) on Wednesday criticized what he called negative moves by Washington and Tokyo against Beijing during a video call with Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi.
“What arouses attention and vigilance is the fact that, even before the American leader has set out for the meeting, the so-called joint Japan-US anti-China rhetoric is already kicking up dust,” Wang said, according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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