Biden's first meeting will be with the Japanese prime minister: a clear signal for China

 President Biden’s willingness to receive the Japanese prime minister as the first guest of a foreign government reveals the high symbolic value that the White House gives to the meeting. The visit, which will take place in the first half of April, clearly represents a signal towards the foreign policy intentions of the new American administration and, at the same time, a sort of warning to China and its expansionist intentions in the eastern seas. The political significance of this invitation is concretized in the maintenance, in continuation with Obama's policy, of the priority in foreign policy of attention to the Asian Pacific Ocean region, due to its economic and strategic importance, functional to American interests. The process of strengthening relations between Washington and Tokyo is central, for both sides, within the project to be able to achieve the freedom of the East Asian seas. The meeting also takes on the particular significance of wanting to bring activities related to US diplomatic initiatives back to normal, which the pandemic has certainly made more difficult. Biden, former vice president of Obama, repeats, with this meeting, what had already been done by his democratic predecessor, who met the then Japanese prime minister as his first foreign guest: in the repetition of the first international summit after the election, we see that the Biden's intention is to resume Obama's speech on the centrality of the Asian region; after all, Japan has been considered, since the end of the Second World War, an ally of primary importance for the USA. In terms of multilateral relations, the United States has also called a forthcoming four-party summit, with the participation, as well as the United States, of India, Australia and Japan itself, which underlines the desire to place diplomatic action at the center attention was paid to the East Asian region, proceeding in harmony with other partners in the Western area interested in Chinese containment. It is very significant that this summit was inaugurated in 2007, for the coordination of aid following the Japanese earthquake, but was subsequently suspended due to the joint Indian and Australian desire not to offend Chinese sensibilities; however, the growth of Beijing's military spending coupled with its willingness to exert its power over the eastern Pacific area, considered as its exclusive zone of influence, has caused new reflections in Canberra and New Delhi. For India, then, the rivalry that has never subsided with China, essentially based on geostrategic and economic arguments, has increased for the disputed territories on the Himalayan border. New Delhi thus joined the joint submarine warfare military exercises carried out by the US, Australia, Japan and Canada and strengthened its military cooperation with Washington, causing Chinese resentment. This scenario, it must not be forgotten, is grafted onto the already existing trade war between Washington and Beijing, which remains one of the few points of contact and continuity between the Trump presidency and that of Biden: it is clear that this provokes feelings of aversion in the Chinese country. which could favor dangerous consequences of a diplomatic and military nature capable of altering the precarious regional balance. Beijing also feels encircled by the resumption of activities of the four-party summit, which it has condemned as a dangerous anti-Chinese multilateralism and this could accelerate some initiatives of the People's Republic that have been repeatedly threatened, such as the question of Taiwan, on which Beijing has never ruled out armed intervention to bring the island back under full Chinese sovereignty. So if American activism appears justified by the Chinese initiatives themselves, the hope is that the Biden administration, while firm in its own intentions, will be endowed with greater caution and experience than its predecessor.