Fears over China fuel wish for larger American presence in Indo-Pacific: US ambassador to Japan

Beijing ‘will never win the award for good-neighbour policy’, says Rahm Emanuel, citing its disputes with New Delhi and Manila, among others in region
Assertion comes amid criticism from China just before unprecedented trilateral summit between the US, Japan and South Korea

US-China relations

Igor Patrickin Washington

Published: 6:59am, 17 Aug 2023

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Countries in the Indo-Pacific are “desperate” for an increased American presence as they fear the risks of an “unanchored and untethered China”, the US ambassador to Japan said on Wednesday.

Rahm Emanuel’s assertion came amid criticism from Beijing as US President Joe Biden and his administration prepare for a trilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol.

Washington has said the gathering at Camp David in Maryland is meant to consolidate a trilateral alliance. It marks the first summit involving the three nations outside international forums and is the first time foreign leaders will visit the US presidential country retreat since 2015, underscoring the meeting’s importance to Washington.

Beijing has voiced dismay over the growing closeness between Seoul, Tokyo and Washington. China’s state-owned tabloid Global Times described the summit as taking steps towards a “mini-Nato” and accused the US of “undermining the post-Cold War economic integration process in Asia”.

But Emanuel argued that the meeting, along with other security initiatives like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue as well as the US’s trilateral pact with Australia and Britain known as Aukus, instead symbolised “a restructuring … and strengthening of America’s alliances and commitments in the region”.

“China will never win the award for the good-neighbour policy. They have a land conflict with India,” he said in remarks at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

“They just fired water cannons at the Philippine coastguard. They’re in constant conflict for the Senkaku Islands,” he added, using the Japanese name for the chain of islands in the East China Sea that Beijing claims and calls the Diaoyus.

Emanuel said China’s military “fired five missiles on Japan’s [exclusive economic zone]” following a visit last year to Taiwan by then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “They’ve had economic coercion as recently as 2017 against [South] Korea and then Australia. I’m doing this by memory, and I’m probably missing half of it.”

Kurt Campbell, the White House’s national security coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, also spoke at Brookings on Wednesday, and described US involvement in the region as “here to stay” and “now fully embedded in the American system”.

Indo-Pacific nations were under “enormous diplomatic and military pressure”, he said, with aspects of an international system that has yielded “remarkable prosperity and tremendous wealth” for the Indo-Pacific now under strain from China.

“What they sense and what they witness is a China whose actions have demonstrably changed in recent years in ways that threaten their security and that raise larger concerns both nationally and regionally,” said Campbell of countries in the region.

Campbell believed Washington’s partners saw the US’s role as vital to “maintain peace and stability”, upholding an order “built on the rule of law, freedom of navigation and peaceful resolution” of conflicts.

Meanwhile, Campbell denied that the summit was centred on “containing China”, a narrative the Biden administration has been emphasising through other officials.

State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel on Tuesday said there was “no reason to view this summit as a provocative or any kind of step or effort to incite tensions” with China.

Speaking separately about the summit on Wednesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby repeatedly stated that China was not the principal concern bringing the three nations together.

Asked whether the leaders would discuss their response to a possible military attack by Beijing against Taiwan, Kirby said a key objective for the trilateral was “restoring and reinvigorating alliances and partnerships … to deter conflict”.

A range of topics spanning economics, diplomacy and security would be discussed, but the meeting was “not about the PRC”, Kirby added.

“It’s not about a specific challenge in the region. It is really about the broader challenge of improving our trilateral cooperation.”

Additional reporting by Robert Delaney