U.S. President Joe Biden will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Friday (April 16). This is Biden’s first face-to-face meeting with a foreign leader, underscoring his desire to strengthen the U.S.-Japan alliance in response to the Chinese challenge.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sachs said Thursday that the first face-to-face bilateral meeting between the United States and Japan was significant. Our approach to China and our joint coordination and cooperation in that regard, as well as our shared commitment to the denuclearization of North Korea, will be part of the discussion,” she said. Security will also be a prominent issue – regional security.”
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Thursday before leaving Japan that he hoped to build a relationship of trust with U.S. President Joe Biden that would make the alliance between the two countries even stronger.
Reuters quoted a senior U.S. official as saying the meeting was expected to result in initiatives to diversify supply chains that are overly dependent on China. In addition, Japan is expected to commit $2 billion to work with the U.S. on alternatives to China’s Huawei 5G network.
Biden and Kan are also expected to discuss China-related human rights issues, including the situation in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, the official said.
The meeting is expected to result in a formal statement on Taiwan, said the official, who declined to be named. China has been putting pressure on Taiwan with frequent military exercises in the Taiwan Strait in recent days.
Kunihiko Miyake, an adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, told Reuters, “This will be a prelude to a series of meetings between like-minded countries to send the right signals to Beijing.”
The U.S. intelligence community’s Annual Threat Assessment 2021, released this week, says China’s efforts to expand its growing influence is one of the biggest threats to the United States. The report also says China is a competitor that increasingly has near-rivaled U.S. power.
The report said China’s Communist Party will continue to use a whole-of-government approach to “expand China’s influence, weaken U.S. influence, create divisions between Washington and its allies and partners, and foster new international norms favoring China’s authoritarian regime.”
According to the New York Times, Jennifer Lind, associate professor of political science at Dartmouth College, said, “The U.S.-Japan alliance is at a crossroads, and the two alliances have to decide how we are going to respond to the growing threat from China and China’s agenda for international order.”
China said it has expressed serious concern to the U.S. and Japan over Kan’s visit to the U.S. and the “collusion between the two countries in their negative moves toward China.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Friday, “The current relations between China, the United States and China and Japan are at an important juncture, and the international community is highly concerned about what kind of message the visit will release to the outside world.”
He added that the U.S. and Japan should take China’s concerns and demands seriously and refrain from interfering in China’s internal affairs or harming China’s interests, or engaging in “small circles” against China. China will make the necessary response as appropriate.
After Kan, South Korean President Moon Jae-in will be the second foreign leader to visit Washington. He will visit in late May and is expected to focus on regional security, denuclearization of North Korea and other issues in the U.S.-South Korea talks.
The meeting “will underscore the strong alliance between the United States and South Korea and the longstanding ties and friendship between our two peoples,” said Sachs.
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