Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is scheduled to hold a summit Friday with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, with the two leaders expected to confirm the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
Kishida, who is making his first trip to the U.S. capital since taking office in October 2021, and Biden are also likely to agree the two countries will cooperate to secure semiconductor supply chains in a bid to counter China's military and economic clout in the region.
The meeting between Kishida, who represents a constituency in Hiroshima, and Biden comes around four months ahead of the Group of Seven summit to be held in the western Japan city devastated by a U.S. atomic bombing in August 1945.
In December, Japan decided to almost double its defense spending over the next five years and acquire enemy base strike capabilities to deter attacks on its territory, amid growing threats from its neighbors China and North Korea.
In the wake of the move, Kishida and Biden are certain to discuss the first revision since 2015 of the Guidelines for Japan-U.S. Defense Cooperation to enable the two allies to collectively operate Tokyo's counterstrike capabilities.
Fears are mounting that Taiwan may become a military flashpoint in the Indo-Pacific region in the near future, as Communist-led China regards the self-ruled democratic island as a renegade province to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.
Kishida and Biden are set to reaffirm close cooperation to realize a "free and open Indo-Pacific" -- a vision seen as a response to China's increasing assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region.
Regarding the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, Tokyo, which relies heavily on Washington for military protection, would strive to receive confirmation from the United States, as it customarily does, that the islets are covered by Article 5 of the 1960 Japan-U.S. security treaty.
The provision calls for the United States to defend territories under Japanese administration from armed attack.
The uninhabited islands are administrated by Japan, but China has laid claim to them since the early 1970s, calling them Diaoyu, after studies by the United Nations indicated there might be potentially lucrative gas reserves around them.
The Senkakus are also under the jurisdiction of Japan's southern island prefecture of Okinawa -- a geopolitically important region that still hosts the bulk of U.S. bases in the country over 50 years after it reverted to Japan in 1972 following U.S. rule.
The United States is the final stop on Kishida's weeklong tour of five of the G-7 nations in Europe and North America in the run-up to the May summit. He is slated to meet Biden after having breakfast with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
