Bee in Tokyo’s bonnet honey talks to Washington

The Japanese economy minister’s trip to Washington, in advance of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to the United States, was an explicit sign that countering China is now front and center in Japan’s foreign policy. In his meeting with US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura discussed “the importance of working together to promote and protect critical and emerging technologies, including through R&D and export controls”, according to a US Commerce Department readout.

With US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, the Japanese economy chief signed a memorandum of cooperation for a task force on the promotion of human rights and international labor standards in supply chains.

While all the official documents made public steered clear of naming names, the visiting Japanese minister made no secret of his government’s obsession with China in a speech he gave at the Center for Strategic and International Studies between his meetings with Raimondo and Tai.

Echoing the recent clamor about the failure of the Western policy of engaging China, the Japanese official called it a vital mistake for Western countries to let China and Russia join the World Trade Organization more than two decades ago, on the assumption that deepening economic interdependence would “unquestionably bring about a peaceful world” after the Cold War by drawing them into the Western fold.

Calling alleged China’s “economic coercion” a “clear and present danger” for economies all over the world, the Japanese minister courted his hosts by urging likeminded countries to join forces and push back. “We must rebuild a world order based on the fundamental values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law”, he urged. That sort of rhetoric has become all the rage in Washington, and buttering up his hosts with such words shows how eager Tokyo is to take advantage of Washington’s current neuroses.

With Tokyo holding the rotating presidency of the G7 industrial democracies this year, his government is keen on focusing the will of the Western alliance. “We expect effective responses to economic coercion will be a major item at this year’s G7 summit,” said Nishimura.

Export controls, supply chain resilience and energy security are the most important areas for collective responses by Western democracies, according to the Japanese minister. But as indicated in the agreements he reached with Raimondo and Tai, as well as in his CSIS remarks, export controls may carry outstanding weight on Tokyo’s agenda.

Nishimura flagged the agenda when he suggested that US-Japan cooperation should extend beyond semiconductors to encompass biotechnology, artificial intelligence and quantum science. That would offer Japan a leg up in the competition to be at the forefront of these technologies that are the technological high ground.

China and Japan have been on friendly terms for decades, and bilateral trade is of critical significance to both economies. But with Japan having made up its mind on an unprecedented post-war military buildup, and increasingly directly targeting China in the present geopolitical brawl, it is clear there is an inevitable period of turbulence looming for bilateral ties.