Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi greets US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
Tokyo:
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Toyko on Tuesday to meet with some of Washington’s closest allies in Asia, Japan, Australia and India, to build support against what the United States is saying be China’s dangerous and growing regional influence.
The visit, which was supposed to include trips to Mongolia and South Korea, was cut short after President Donald Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19. This is Pompeo’s first trip to East Asia since July 2019 and comes as ties between the United States and strategic rival China are at their worst in decades.
The full-day tour includes a meeting of foreign ministers from the Quad group of countries: the United States, Australia, India and Japan.
As Washington sought to build support from Asian allies against Beijing, analysts said China’s neighbors wanted to avoid a direct confrontation because of economic ties.
Following a meeting between Pompeo and his Australian counterpart, Marise Payne, the US State Department said the two discussed concerns over China’s “malignant activity” in the region – language likely to elicit a response from Beijing.
“The secretary and the foreign minister also discussed their common concerns regarding the malicious activities of the People’s Republic of China in the region,” a State Department official said in the statement.
However, Payne’s statement didn’t even mention China.
“Whether it’s individual human rights, market economies, tackling disinformation or building the resilience of our supply chains, our common values and interests mean that we share a vision for a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific, ”she told media.
When Pompeo met with the Japanese Foreign Minister, he said that new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was a “force for good” and would strengthen relations between Washington and Tokyo. He was due to meet Suga later on Tuesday.
China has denounced the Quad as an attempt to contain its development.
Regional rival
The Quad meeting is unlikely to result in a specific course of action, although the meeting itself may serve as a warning to China and play with its fears that the grouping will someday become a formalized structure like the NATO, experts said.
Washington and Beijing, the world‘s two largest economies, disagree on a wide range of issues, from Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus to its imposition of a new security law on Hong Kong and ambitions in the South China Sea.
Most Asian allies have been pleased with Washington’s tenacity towards their regional rival, China, but have not greeted the recent heavily charged rhetoric from Trump and Pompeo with such enthusiasm and fear going too far to upset China.
Part of the problem for Washington’s Asian allies is their dependence on China for trade. China was the top destination for Australian exports in 2019, the second destination for Japanese exports and the third largest destination for Indian exports, according to the IMF’s trade statistics management compiled by Refinitiv.
Japan has told the United States that it wants to deepen cooperation in the area of cybersecurity, according to a statement from the Tokyo Foreign Ministry.
The United States said it greatly appreciates the meeting of the Quad Group of Foreign Ministers as a platform to strengthen its solidarity against China with regional allies.
“We hope to have some important announcements, some important achievements,” Pompeo told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in the United States before leaving for Tokyo, but he declined to say what they would be.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
