Vice President Joe Biden is on a trip to Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the People’s Republic of China this week. What’s the plan? Is he going to help our allies deal with a newly aggressive PRC and its sea grab for the East and South China Seas? Or with the PRC’s use of an ADIZ—normally just a warning area regarding aircraft—to seize control of the airspace over the East China Sea, triggered by the PRC’s grab for Japan’s Senkaku Islands in the southern reach of the Sea?
In Japan
Biden will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe before focusing on women’s issues with the new US ambassador, Caroline Kennedy.
Because Japan’s post-war human rights record is so dismal, and women’s issues are more important than the threat to our ally’s territorial integrity represented by the PRC’s sea grab.
In the Republic of Korea
The US is trying to complete a major trade agreement by year’s end, but it’s not certain the deadline with be honored.
Issues of market access, environmental protections and intellectual property remain controversial. It’s also unclear whether Congress will approve the pact without making changes, potentially derailing the deal.
Because the accelerated mutual prosperity is less important than those environmental protections—never minding that that prosperity increase underlies and is necessary for any efforts at dealing with the environment effectively, particularly legitimate environmental concerns, much less any resource waste on anthropogenic climate change claptrap.
In the PRC
Biden [will] hold talks meet with China’s president, Xi Jinping, vice president, Li Yuanchao, and premier, Li Keqiang.
Will he raise the PRC’s human rights record, or their sea grab, which not only threatens Japan, but the Republic of Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and threatens to surround the Republic of China? Will he remonstrate with them over the PRC’s disdain for the intellectual property of others? Will he talk about environmental concerns and the PRC’s routine pollution of its atmosphere?
Probably not.