Eastern Asia

On 4 July 2020, it will be exactly one year since Japan introduced export restrictions on South Korea on three types of chemicals critical for the microelectronics industry: fluorinated polyimide, hydrogen fluoride, and photoresists. South Korea called that step the start of a trade war.

In the strategic game that is playing out in the area around the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the presence of Japan is growing more prominent. The nature of this presence is reflected in both the aspect of Japan re-establishing itself as a leading world power and the swift transformation of the political puzzle taking shape here.

Tensions between the United States and the PRC keep rising. In fact, the confrontation is starting to resemble a “new Cold War”. The relationship appears to have reached a turning point on May 20, 2020, when the White House delivered a report, “United States Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China”, to members of Congress.

Even before the current US President Donald Trump took office, he was vocal about the vital issue of power balance within the US-Russia-China triangle for Washington. At that point, he was already making promises to wage a trade war on China and find common ground with Russia.

Let us start with the punchline: “Mass media in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia is depicting the People’s Republic of China as ‘capitalist’ because ‘capitalist’ is now a dirty word. Even people in the West see ‘market economy’ as some sort of filth.”
To call China ‘capitalist’ is to smear China. It is as if to say: “Chinese people are precisely like us. China is doing to the world the same injustice, committing the same crimes as we have been doing for 500+ years.”

This year celebrates an important anniversary for Japan–United States relations, giving us an opportunity to focus on their transformation with time. The author is referring to January 19, which marked the signing of the United States-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security sixty years ago, and to July 23, the date it was enacted. In Washington’s and Tokyo’s official statements, the pact is still described as the cornerstone of their bilateral relationship, a familiar catchphrase by now.

On 24 June a US court rejected a bid by the US government to block publication of the memoirs of John Bolton, a former national security adviser to US President Donald Trump.

In general terms, relations between the world’s two leading powers, despite the strain in recent months (which, in the author’s view, is almost exclusively down to the intensifying political climate within the United States), now and then are illuminated by glimmers of positivity. This gives us cause to hope that the situation between both of the main geopolitical players is still under control.

Several noteworthy events linked to the China-EU ties have taken place recently. At first glance, they appeared to be routine in nature because during the past decade these events have been held on an annual basis. They are particularly relevant nowadays due mainly to the current geopolitical context.