Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will visit India and the Philippines soon after his trip to the United States this week, with the aim of seeking to reaffirm regional security cooperation. Analysts say Tokyo’s security cooperation with New Delhi and Manila will only be a slow and gradual development, given China’s growing economic and military power and the constraints of economic ties.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga plans to visit India and the Philippines in late April after visiting Washington on April 16 to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese media outlet Kyodo News reported, citing Japanese government sources.
Analysts told the Voice of America that Kan is trying to reaffirm cooperation with the countries concerned on a vision based on a “free and open Indo-Pacific region” through his visits to the two countries.
Security cooperation between countries that view the Chinese Communist Party as a threat will increase as the Quadripartite Security Dialogue countries perceive the threat from the Chinese Communist Party to be growing. The United States, Japan, Australia and India, as well as the Philippines, are more concerned about the threat from the CCP than they were a year ago.
Meanwhile, Japan’s security cooperation with India and the Philippines will develop slowly and gradually, as all three countries are economically dependent on constructive economic ties with Beijing.
How does India choose between Tokyo and Beijing?
Since U.S. President Joe Biden took office, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD), consisting of Japan, the United States, Australia and India, has increasingly become the focal point of efforts by the Indo-Pacific countries to counter the growing economic and military influence of the Chinese Communist Party.
Last November, Japan and the other three countries held the Malabar Joint Maritime Exercise to demonstrate their strength. In March, the leaders of the four countries agreed at an online video summit to work together to address the challenge of a “rules-based maritime order” in the South and East China Seas, targeting Beijing.
Regarding Kan’s upcoming trip to India after his visit to the United States, Indian online media outlet The Print reported that India, Japan and the Philippines are all facing challenges from China, with their respective territorial integrity threatened by Beijing, and that India and the Chinese Communist Party have had serious clashes that have resulted in bloodshed and casualties during their border standoffs over the past year.
According to public opinion, the main purpose of Kan’s visit to India is to push Prime Minister Modi to agree to hold a face-to-face summit of the Quadripartite Security Dialogue in advance of the G-7 summit in June in the United Kingdom, when India will India will participate as a special guest at the G-7 summit.
Given the difficult political relationship between New Delhi and Beijing over the past few years and the interdependence of economic relations, how will Prime Minister Modi respond to Kan’s request? Will India firmly engage in the Quadripartite Dialogue to confront China, or will it prefer to repair its relationship with Beijing?
Dr. Denny Roy, a senior researcher at the East-West Center in Hawaii, told the Voice of America that India is the most cautious and reticent of the four countries in the Quadripartite Security Dialogue. India is the most cautious and reticent of the four countries in the Quadripartite Security Dialogue. He said, “India has always been more cautious in confronting China because of its traditional non-alignment, lack of consensus on its desired regional strategic role, and its economic interdependence with China.”
However, Rao Yi added that due to India’s growing concern about Chinese Communist dominance in the region, coupled with recent violent border clashes with the Chinese Communist Party; “all of this has led India to increasingly tend to support security cooperation with Japan.”
The analysis by Richard Weitz, director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, echoes Rao Yi’s views.
According to Weitz, both India and Japan are concerned about the aggressive threat of the Chinese Communist Party in the Asia-Pacific region; however, even under Modi’s administration, India is reluctant to join an alliance that is too opposed to the Chinese Communist Party.
“That said, a face-to-face quadripartite summit between Kan and Modi on the sidelines of the G-7 summit hosted in Britain in June would not be too provocative a move for the CCP; rather, it could be defined as a meeting of the world’s leading Asian democracies,” Weitz said.
Is Manila willing to join the party?
According to Japanese media reports, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will go to Manila to meet with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, in addition to visiting India after his meeting with the U.S. president. The relationship between Manila and Beijing, on the other hand, is a complex mix of love and hate.
In some ways, Duterte seems to be closer to Beijing; especially during the New Coronavirus pandemic. Not long ago, on March 29, the first shipment of China’s Kexing Neocon vaccine, procured by the Philippine government, arrived in Manila. Duterte personally attended the vaccine handover ceremony.
According to a report by the Communist Party’s Xinhua News Agency, Duterte called it a milestone in the Philippine-China partnership, highlighting the friendship and solidarity between the two countries, and said he would be able to visit the Communist Party as soon as conditions permit to “shake President Xi Jinping’s hand and express my gratitude in person.
In recent weeks, however, Manila has not only released photos of Chinese vessels docked near the disputed islands, but also called on the CCP to withdraw more than 200 vessels that it says are violating Philippine territorial waters in the South China Sea, saying the fishing boats do not appear to be fishing and that their crews are CCP maritime militias.
The international community is highly concerned about how Duterte will react to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s appeal this time. However, scholars interviewed by Voice of America agree that Duterte has a problematic personality and often acts out of character.
“According to Rao Yi, a senior fellow at the East-West Center, although relations between the Philippines and Japan got off to a good start when Duterte and Kan spoke on the phone last December, it is difficult to predict how Duterte will react now.
Duterte has been in a state of ‘schizophrenic’ when it comes to relations with the Chinese Communist Party; but he seems to be in a state of anti-China at the moment, as Chinese fishing boats have recently swarmed to Whitsun Reef, which the Philippines claims as its sovereign territory,” Rao said. Whitsun Reef, known in China as Ox Yoke Reef and in the Philippines as Julian Felipe Reef), and the behavior of Chinese fishing boats is believed to be carrying out Beijing’s orders. Given this, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga would certainly be interested in encouraging the Philippines to confront China’s encroachment on its territory.”
Weitz of the Hudson Institute also told Voice of America that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is a very unpredictable man who seems to have a personality problem. Last year’s announcement by Duterte that the Philippines was breaking its more than 20-year-old security pact with the U.S. is an example of this, and it is hard to imagine that he would allow the Philippine national security apparatus to rebuild its security relationship with the U.S.
On February 11, 2020, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs announced that the Philippines had officially decided to terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States on the same day, as ordered by Duterte.
It is believed that the trigger for Duterte’s move at the time was the U.S. government’s denial of a sitting Philippine congressional senator’s visa to the U.S. last January on the grounds of human rights violations. Yet now, more than a year later, the Philippines is embarking on a two-week joint military exercise with the United States.
Where do Tokyo and Beijing go from here?
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s visit to Washington this week was the first foreign leader to be hosted at the White House since President Biden took office. Analysts generally expect Kan to reemphasize to Biden the growing tensions Tokyo faces with Beijing over the Senkaku Islands (known in China as the Diaoyu Islands).
Washington’s relationship with Beijing is now at a critical point in terms of whether it can be further fully restarted. U.S.-China bilateral relations have fallen to a 40-year low since Trump launched his trade war and the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in early 2020.
In contrast, relations between Beijing and Tokyo have been in a state of gradual improvement over the past four years. Kan’s predecessor, Shinzo Abe, made an official visit to China in 2018, when the visit was the Japanese prime minister’s official visit to China after nearly eight years. Communist Party leader Xi Jinping would have made a return visit to Japan last April if not for the impact of the new crown epidemic.
Now that time has changed and there is a change of government in both Tokyo and Washington, how Kan and Biden, who both just took office, will get along and how Kan will rediscover the balance between Beijing and Washington has become the focus of close international attention.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday (April 14) that Biden’s harsh criticism of the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights issues had unnerved Kan, who is thought to have softened his confrontational tone toward Beijing when he met with Biden.
Rumi Aoyama, a professor at Waseda University in Japan, was quoted as saying, “Japan is trying to make sure that the mistrust (against the Chinese Communist Party) in terms of security does not affect economic relations.”
Weitz, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Politics and Military Affairs, told Voice of America that improvements in Sino-Japanese relations seem to have stalled recently, perhaps largely because of the change of government in Washington and Tokyo.
“The likelihood of any further improvement in the next few years is slim and will be a state of transient change,” Weitz said.
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