Japanese officials were irritated that the US took China’s threat too coldly. Even after a confrontation between Chinese and Japanese ships off the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands a decade earlier, American leaders continued the engagement. “We warned America,” grumbled a former Japanese ambassador to Banyan. Offensive on China, It is now giving Japan the opposite concern.
In an interview with The Economist and other global media on 20 April, Kishida Fumio, the prime minister of Japan, was asked what his country was doing militarily to stop China’s hegemonic ambitions. He was reluctant to go inside. Instead of naming the many measures that Japan is taking strengthen its defenseHe added: “What should be the priority is proactive diplomacy”.
So it continued. Speaking ahead of the G7 summit that Japan will host next month in his hometown of Hiroshima, Mr. Kishida, often glancing at briefing papers, took pains to make Japan not bad relations with china even worse. “Japan will insist on what needs to be said and urge responsible action while maintaining firm dialogue on various issues and cooperating on common challenges,” he said. He reiterated his desire to build a “constructive and stable” relationship with China. He used almost the same formulation in his speech in Washington in January.
Indeed there are many indications that Japan feels that the US-China rivalry has become too heated. Japanese leaders now constantly call for better dialogue with China. Sino-Japanese diplomacy has quietly resumed since the first summit between Mr. Kishida and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Indonesia in November. Officials from the foreign and defense ministries of the two countries met in late February. In late March, his armed forces set up a defense hotline. Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa went to Beijing on 2 April, the first such visit in three years.
Japanese lawmakers are also showing restraint. The Diet has nothing like the belligerent China Select Committee in the US House of Representatives. Japan’s parliament houses an old Japan-China Parliamentary Friendship Association – which this week named Nikai Toshihiro as its head. An aging kingmaker, he is known for his close ties to Beijing.
This does not mean that Japan is less wary of China. Mr Kishida has repeatedly called for “peace and security in the Taiwan Strait” and signaled Japan’s reluctance to tolerate a “change of the status quo through force” – code for protesting Chinese aggression against Taiwan . Japan’s plan to double defense spending over the next five years is meant to assure China that it cannot be pushed around. No one in Tokyo needs convincing that China is posing a threat.
On the contrary, the proximity of that threat makes Japan take it very seriously. In America, talk of a war over Taiwan half a world away is an abstraction; In Japan, this leads people to wonder where the nearest bomb shelter might be. This is why Japan, in contrast to the hot winds on Capitol Hill, is taking such pains to control the temperature. Mr. Kishida stressed, “It is very important for the international community that the US-China relationship remains stable.”
There are signs that the message is getting through. A communiqué issued by a gathering of G7 foreign ministers on April 18 in the Japanese province of Nagano, partly at Japan’s urging, calls on countries to “clearly” and “act together” with China – an extended The diplomatic equivalent of the hand. United States Trade Representative Catherine Tai assured an audience in Tokyo on April 20 that the US does not intend to isolate itself from China. That same day, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the US wanted a “constructive and fair” relationship with China.
Even then it will be difficult to reduce the temperature. Election season is approaching in the US and Tokyo has become a stop on the circuit. (Ron DeSantis, Florida’s ambitious Republican governor and Donald Trump’s rival, will visit on April 24.) And China is barely raising a hand; An employee of a Japanese pharmaceutical company was arrested in Beijing last month on charges of espionage. China’s willingness to talk with Japan is mostly about trying to drive a wedge between the US and its allies. Nevertheless, Mr. Kishida’s foray into Indo-Pacific temperature control may be his most significant geopolitical contribution.
Read more from Banyan, our columnist on Asia:
Michael Lipton: the big man of land reform (20 April)
Narendra Modi is rewriting Indian history (April 13)
China’s Huge Asian Investment Has Failed to Buy Its Soft Power (April 5)
Also: How Banyan Pillars got its name
© 2023, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under license. Original content can be found at www.economist.com
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