Japan caught between China, US over diplomacy, Winter Olympics boycott, analysts say

Japanese politicians are divided over whether the country’s foreign minister should visit China next year amid the US-led boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics

Conservative voices are calling for a hard-line stance, but analysts said Tokyo was ‘trying to find the middle ground’ as it seeks to balance its US-China ties

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Tokyo has yet to decide whether it will join the US-led diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Photo: Reuters

Published: 8:00pm, 14 Dec 2021

Japan must walk a diplomatic tightrope between the United States and China, analysts have warned, amid disquiet in Tokyo over a planned ministerial visit to Beijing and the question of whether to join the US-led boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Taro Kono, a former front-runner in the race to succeed Yoshihide Suga as Japanese prime minister, hit out on Monday at “irresponsible voices” that have been calling for Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi not to accept the invitation that was extended to him last month by his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

“Diplomacy is not something you do by lobbing slogans at each other,” said Kono, who himself served as Japan’s foreign minister from August 2017 to September 2019, during a speech in Tokyo.

Taro Kono, former Japanese foreign minister and member of the Liberal Democratic Party. Photo: Rodrigo Reyes Marin/Zuma Press Wire/dpa

“Some say that all we need to do is to dial up the rhetoric towards China … We need to be very much concerned about the rise of such irresponsible voices.”

Kono, who missed out on his bid to become leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in September largely because of his middle-of-the-road political stance, has since been sidelined from the cabinet and is now the LDP’s public relations chief.

Hayashi’s China visit is expected to take place next year, when the two countries mark 50 years since normalising diplomatic relations. The last time a Japanese foreign minister visited China was in December 2019.

“Hayashi is a former chairman of the Japan-China Friendship Parliamentarians’ Union and there are plenty of people within the LDP who see him as being too close to China,” said Hiromi Murakami, a political-science professor at Temple University’s Tokyo campus.