The move will see Tokyo leverage on a 50-year alliance with the regional grouping to expand its role and become a major player in the region, alongside China.
Over the past two decades, China has, through investments into individual Asean countries and via its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), emerged as a crucial economic partner for Southeast Asian countries.
Launched in 2013, the BRI aims to develop global infrastructure and networks, connecting Asia to Africa and Europe through land and maritime routes. Apart from Laos, almost every Asean country had signed on to the initiative.
Following slight delays to its implementation necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the BRI is now chugging along, including in Malaysia through megaprojects such as the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL).
However, concurrent with these developments are security concerns arising from China enforcing its claims to much of the South China Sea, with frequent standoffs and confrontations, including one which took place as recently as two weeks ago with the Philippines.
The Philippines opted out of the BRI just last month, giving up Chinese funding for three rail projects costing an estimated US$4.9 billion. Manila denied the decision was linked to tensions in the South China Sea, saying instead that “China isn’t that interested anymore”.
Nonetheless, Tsutomu Kikuchi, an international political economy professor at Japan’s Aoyama Gakuin University, believes that, these days, a nation’s economic and security strategies have become intertwined.
Kikuchi cited how Jake Sullivan – the national security adviser to United States president Joe Biden – had, in April, spoken about the US’s international economic strategies.
“It is peculiar for the national security adviser to talk about the economy. That is the real situation in the US. So, we can see that economic strategies are now closely related to security strategies,” he told FMT during a trip organised by Japan’s foreign affairs ministry.
Japan’s presence can check China’s influence
Speaking in Kuala Lumpur earlier this month, Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida said Malaysia has “an important role in regional peace and security”. In response, Wisma Putra underscored Japan’s own “vital role as an Asean dialogue partner”.
An official from the Japanese foreign affairs ministry’s regional policy division said Asean countries have expressed concern over Beijing’s growing influence in certain parts of the region.
“We are basically responding to those calls from Asean countries (for Japan to have a greater role in Southeast Asia) and are trying to balance and check the influence of China in the region, so that Asean countries can have more choices among direct partners.
“No nation wants to be too dependent on one country,” he told FMT.
But he said Tokyo’s endeavour to increase its stake in Asean, particularly economically, is not about uprooting China’s economic influence in the region.
“We are not trying to match China when it comes to trade relations. China is an important investment and trade partner to Japan as well,” he maintained.
The official also said Japan’s engagements with Asean have not been limited to the economy, with Tokyo also setting its sights on partnerships to tackle issues like climate change, transnational crimes, energy transitions and digitisation, among others.
He insisted that Tokyo viewed Asean as equal partners, and that some nations in the region are ahead of Japan in several areas, including digitisation.
“In Malaysia, for example, digitisation technology is more widely applied. So we do not have donor-and-recipient relations. No more. We are truly equal partners and we can work together for common challenges.”
Meanwhile, Kikuchi said Japan’s position is clear, in that it has no intention to erase or reduce China’s presence in Southeast Asia, especially economically.
“We are not enemies, we are closely interdependent. But we have deep concerns about some of China’s behaviour in the region,” he said, citing China’s intrusions in the East and South China Seas.
“We have deep concerns. We hope that China will change its behaviour, but we also need to strengthen our own positions, even economically.”
The 26th Asean-Japan summit was held on Sept 6 in Jakarta, Indonesia, while a commemorative summit in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of their cooperation will be held in Tokyo from Dec 16 to 18.