Opinion | Japan-India summit highlights how badly both countries need – and need to contain – China

Concluding a two-day summit visit to Tokyo rich in complex symbolism, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted that, “Without the cooperation between India and Japan, the 21st century cannot be an Asian century”.

Modi would have been aware that his host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, had just paid a historic visit to Beijing – the first time in seven years that Japan and China were meeting at the summit level after considerable tension over disputed island territoriality.

China’s creeping military assertiveness remains a source of considerable anxiety for its neighbours. The South China Sea experience, which has rattled the Asean states, has been experienced differently by Japan and India, yet both have a sizeable trade-investment relationship with China, which now has the world’s No 2 gross domestic product after the United States.

Paradoxically, this flurry of summit-level activity among the three major Asian nations has been triggered by the policy petulance and turbulence associated with US President Donald Trump. The trade war option Washington is currently pursuing apropos Beijing is illustrative.

On assuming office in early 2017, one of the first major policy reversals that Trump approved was the US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has weakened the East Asian trading bloc.