WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden on Friday sought to present a united front with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to counter an assertive China as the US leader held his first face-to-face White House summit since taking office. The talks offered the Democratic president, inaugurated in January, a chance to work further on his pledge to revitalise US alliances that frayed under his Republican predecessor Donald Trump.
China topped the agenda, underscoring Japan’s central role in US efforts to face down Beijing. The two leaders addressed an array of geopolitical issues in a joint statement, including “the importance of peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait.”
“Today Prime Minister Suga and I affirmed our ironclad support for the US-Japanese alliance and for our shared security,” Biden told a joint news conference in the White House Rose Garden, calling the discussions “productive.”
“We committed to working together to take on the challenges from China and on issues like the East China Sea, the South China Sea, as well as North Korea, to ensure a future of a free and open Indo Pacific.”
Other pressing concerns at the talks included China’s increased military movements near Taiwan, its tightening grip on Hong Kong and its crackdown on Uighurs in Xinjiang. Suga said he and Biden agreed on the necessity of frank discussions with China in the context of Beijing’s activities in the Indo-Pacific region.
In a strongly worded statement on Saturday, China’s embassy in Washington said Beijing was “resolutely opposed” to the joint statement, and that Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang were China’s internal affairs.
The remarks have “completely gone beyond the scope of the normal development of bilateral relations”, harming the interests of third parties as well as peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific, the embassy said.
The move was an attempt to split the region that “will inevitably proceed with the purpose of harming others and end in harming themselves”, it added.
The summit — Biden’s first in-person meeting with a foreign leader as president — came just days after China sent 25 aircraft, including fighters and nuclear-capable bombers, near Taiwan, which Beijing considers a wayward province.
— Reuters
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