Build ‘constructive’ relationship with China, Tokyo’s chief diplomat urges UK

LONDON — Japan and the U.K. must work together to build a “constructive and stable relationship with China,” Tokyo’s foreign minister said Wednesday.

Doing so “will be critical” not only to charting the future of the South Pacific, but to countering Russian aggression in Ukraine, Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan’s foreign minister, said in a speech at the Chatham House think tank in London.

It is “necessary to cooperate with China, given its role in the international community and the size of its economy,” Hayashi added, including on global challenges like climate change.

The world is facing “a historical turning point,” Tokyo’s top diplomat said, noting the “security and prosperity of Europe and the Indo-Pacific is inseparable.” He earlier held one-on-one talks with U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, addressed the Ukraine Recovery Conference and met with G7 foreign ministers.

“A decisive factor in shaping the new era is how we respond to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine,” Hayashi said.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion “is affecting our security situation” in the East and South China Sea, Hayashi’s deputy press secretary, Yukiko Okano, told POLITICO ahead of the speech.

She pointed to China and Russia strengthening their military collaboration after the invasion. Joint exercises by bombers near Japan and South Korea earlier this month prompted both countries to scramble fighter jets in response. 

China is determined to reunify the self-ruled island of Taiwan with the mainland and has been watching the conflict in Eastern Europe closely, said another Japanese official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“We really desperately need to avoid something happening in East Asia,” they said, calling on the U.K. to continue to demonstrate commitment to the Indo-Pacific “which makes the calculation of China more difficult and complicated” and Beijing “more prudent against doing something bad” with respect to Taiwan.

The invasion of Taiwan, which manufactures 90 percent of the world’s semiconductors, the Japanese official said, would mean people “can’t buy things like TVs, washing machines or even iPhones.”

The U.K. and Japan must work together, Hayashi said, “to enhance our economic resilience, where further efforts on de-risking, not de-coupling [from China] will be required.”

At the G7 Summit in Hiroshima in May, Prime Ministers Rishi Sunak and Fumio Kishida signed the historic “Hiroshima Accord” with a partnership on semiconductors to strengthen chip supply chains and boost cooperation between their armed forces.

At the end of March, the U.K. gained accession to the Indo-Pacific CPTPP trade bloc under Japan’s leadership.

Kishida welcomed the U.K.’s plan to deploy its Carrier Strike Group in the Indo-Pacific in 2025 to help keep shipping lanes open. 

Tokyo is “seriously concerned about unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion in both the East and South China Seas,” said Hayashi, noting that China is also “accelerating its buildup of nuclear force in an opaque manner.”