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US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy

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

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Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan, is a former White House chief of staff. Photo: AP
Igor Patrickin Washington
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.
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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”.
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