Takaichi Seeks Trump Meeting Before US-China Summit — SkimNews
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- Takaichi Sanae is hoping to meet with Trump during her visit for the UN General Assembly, where she addresses the General Debate on September 22, though as of September 17 "nothing has been decided" about the meeting
- Trump and Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet in Washington on September 24 for a China-U.S. summit with broad implications across policy areas
- Japan's defense white paper, released last month, states China has been "intensifying its activities in the region surrounding Japan [and] extending beyond the so-called first island chain to the second island chain"
- Japan deployed fighters after Chinese and Russian aircraft were detected near the Miyako Strait by Okinawa in June, while Beijing continues coast guard patrols around the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and around Taiwan
- The US is reassigning the aircraft carrier USS George Washington from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East to address the Iran conflict, which a Pentagon inspector general report said is depleting key munitions supplies
- The Yomiuri Shimbun asked in a September editorial: "With the decline in the U.S. military's presence in Asia, aren't China and North Korea taking advantage of this situation?"
- The US, Japan, and other states released a joint statement in August critical of China's unannounced submarine-based long-range ballistic missile launch
Why it matters: The USS George Washington's reassignment from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East creates a tangible gap in US posture that the Yomiuri Shimbun directly flagged as exploitable by China and North Korea. If Trump treats the September 24 Xi summit as a venue to enlist China's help on Iran-driven oil prices rather than coordinating Indo-Pacific strategy with Tokyo, Japan loses leverage on the Senkaku Islands and Taiwan contingencies precisely as China's defense white paper documents it pushing beyond the first island chain.
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