China and Japan Support Free Trade, Amid US Trade War

The Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived on Friday in Beijing, the first official visit to China since he took office in December 2011.

Mr Abe told the Chinese leader Xi Jinping that they have to defend the global free trading system.

The Chinese leader agreed and said that there must be a protection for the multilateralism. The comment implies Beijing's unhappiness with the measures of the US President Donald Trump across the world, mainly the trade war and the unilateral withdrawals from the international treaties.

The two leaders also discussed plans to ramp up trade between the two countries.

The two countries had for several years been locked in a territorial row over a small group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, called the Senkaku by the Japanese and the Diaoyu by the Chinese. They are controlled by Japan, but claimed by Beijing.

Abe’s three-day trip to China, however, will work like an ice-breaker, bringing closer their ties after years of strain.

That was clear in Abe's briefing conference with Chinese premier Li Keqiang. He said that the relationship is now in “historic turning point.”

“From competition to co-existence, Japan and China bilateral relations have entered a new phase. Hand in hand with Premier Li, I would like to advance our ties forward," Abe said.

Li, on the other side, praised the warming ties between the two and said that “frank” discussions we’re made with the Japanese PM.

The visit was preceded by a set of agreements between the regional heavyweights. The two sides signed an accord to prepare plans for talks and exchanges, along with a pact to step up cooperation and innovation.

Hurting harmony

The emerging consensus between the regional economic powers will certainly prove disconcerting to the US, a country that is locked in a war of tariffs with China, and also relatively with Japan.

In mid-September, Trump imposed $200 billion in goods tariffs on China. China hit back by tariffs on the American products. 

Trump administration will find friendship between Tokyo and Japan as a game-changer, and definitely plan-destroyer. The US has been working hard to curb the burgeoning China rise. It counts on Japan’s partnership in confronting China.

New policy on China started by former US President Barak Obama. It continued even more energetically under President Trump, whose naval forces regularly deploy to the disputed South China Sea to arouse the ire of the highly patient Beijing.

Trump waged a trade war on China earlier this year, marked by tariffs on the Chinese goods imported to the US. The commercial confrontation automatically involves others, including EU, Canada, and even Japan.

But now marriage of Chinese-Japanese positions could cut a strong ally like Tokyo from Trump’s circle of friends in the region, at least in the long run.

Washington benefits from East Asia tensions. It holds forces in regional countries and sells arms to them, and so even the very closeness of the regional actors will be hurting to the American interest and position in the region.