Based on my observations, global media coverage of the Suga-Biden summit meeting in Washington was rather favorable. Walter Russell Mead, for example, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s visit was “hailed in both countries as a major success,” and “The alliance with Japan is the single most important international relationship America has.”
“Without Japan’s economic weight, technological capabilities and geographical position,” Mead discerned in his keen analysis, that “the U.S. cannot build an effective coalition to balance China. But without strong and stable American support, Japan can’t last as an independent great power in China’s front yard.”
The primary exception to the generally glowing coverage, of course, came out of China. An April 17 editorial in the Global Times criticized the U.S.-Japan alliance as “becoming the axis of endangering peace in Asia-Pacific” and advised “Japan to stay away from the Taiwan question,” warning that “The deeper it is embroiled in, the bigger the price it will pay.”
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