Team News Riveting
When China’s state-owned media carried a story on Tuesday that its citizens are eyeing improving relations with Japan under Yoshihide Suga Presidency, it came as a surprise for many political observers.
The report said the hashtag for Suga’s win had earned 230 million views on China’s twitter-like Sina Weibo as of Tuesday.
With the debate on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s succession coming to an end, China is set for more trouble in Tokyo as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) members in Japan have elected Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga for the top post.
Through its state-owned media, China had been propagating that Suga’s elevation would steady Sino-Japanese relations. Many Chinese netizens sent their congratulations to the new LDP head and expressed their hopes that relations between China and Japan can improve under his leadership, the report added.
But Suga’s elevation is no good news for Beijing. China is commiting a gross mistake by thinking that Suga’s lack of charisma would mean a departure from Shinzo Abe’s ‘decoupling from China.’ For, Suga is described as Shinzo Abe’s right-hand man, and therefore, he is likely to implement Abe’s vision of decoupling from China and also tackling the serious security threat posed by Beijing vigorously.
Yoshihide Suga is an advocate of strongly decoupling from China. In an interview in April to Asia Nikkei, he had strongly proposed reducing Japan’s reliance on China. He had said, “In the case of surgical masks, for instance, 70 per cent to 80 per cent of what we have here are made in China,” he said, adding even with factories in Japan running at full throttle, they still had a mask shortage.
When China’s economy shut down, a Japanese automaker was unable to procure parts and had to let a plant sit idle. “We need to end a heavy reliance on a single country for a particular product or material,” Suga said.
The Japanese PM-elect is, therefore, going to embark on the same path of incentivising Japanese companies to pack up and leave from China.
