Biden Visit Leaves Tokyo Worried About American Muddle

The approach adopted by President Barack Obama’s White House seems feckless, raising frustration among those fearing China’s military advance.

By Yuka Hayashi and Toko Sekiguchi

Publicly, Japanese leaders are proclaiming U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s Asian swing a success, with the U.S. and Japan presenting a united front in the face of China’s latest territorial muscle-flexing.
Privately, many officials and security experts are growing frustrated about what they perceive to be Washington’s muddled response to China’s increasingly aggressive stance, a fear that has been exacerbated, rather than alleviated, so far during Mr. Biden’s visit to Asia.
Even as he stated the U.S. doesn’t recognize China’s new “air defense identification zone,” Mr. Biden also said the U.S. was “deeply concerned” about China’s unilateral decision, which some in Japan interpreted as an expression that tacitly acknowledged that Beijing would continue to press forward with its steps.
There also appears to be mixed message about whether or not the allies want to push China to pull back its move. 

Japan has demanded China rescind its new ADIZ, but has not explicitly asked the U.S. to do the same because of the perception that such a request would appear to be inappropriate meddling in American policy. 

Earlier this week, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said the Obama administration did want China to “rescind” the zone, but Mr. Biden did not use that word during his visit to Tokyo — an omission noted in the Japanese news media.
And even before Mr. Biden’s trip — which started in Japan Monday might, moved to China on Wednesday, and continues Thursday to South Korea — officials in Tokyo were annoyed by confusing messages from the U.S. government related to whether commercial airlines should file flight plans with China to comply with its new aviation rules. 

That has resulted in U.S. carriers filing such plans, while their Japanese counterparts have been discouraged by their government to do the same.
“Recent U.S. interactions with China, including its response to a contested air defense zone, seem to suggest a disaccord within Washington that may be encouraging Beijing,” the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a leading economic daily, said in its editorial Thursday. 

“To some, the approach adopted by President Barack Obama’s White House seems feckless, raising frustration among those fearing China’s military advance".
And Mr. Biden’s new call on Tokyo and Beijing to establish an emergency response mechanism to avoid unintended accidents has also some in Japan worried that such a system would be designed to reflect China’s desire to assert further its claim on the East China Sea Islands contested by the two countries, rather than Japan’s position that the islands belonged to Japan.
Efforts to create an emergency communications system have taken place in fits and starts, with Tokyo taking the initiative, Japanese officials have said. 

But now under the renewed pressure of the new ADIZ, some in Japan are worried China would try to exert more influence in the process, while Washington, with its priority on avoiding the escalation of tensions, would be willing to accommodate such a move. 

“We are in a very difficult position,” one Japanese government official said.
But officials in public play down such concerns. 

Japan’s chief government spokesman was asked directly at his Thursday news conference if there was any gap between how the two allies were handling China’s move. 

“I don’t believe there is at all,” Yoshihide Suga told reporters. 

“Vice President Biden, during his Japan visit, reaffirmed that Japan and the U.S. stand together in our opinion of the matter. During his talk with the Prime Minister, the vice president was clear that the U.S. does not acknowledge China’s ADIZ, and that it may lead to unforeseen events in the region.”