Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed Friday to boost security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, where China has been ramping up its military assertiveness.
During talks in Berlin, Kishida and Scholz also confirmed that their countries will create an economic security framework amid fears about what they view as China’s overproduction of electric vehicles and other key products using massive subsidies.
As part of efforts to accelerate bilateral cooperation, the two leaders also agreed to hold high-level intergovernmental talks in Germany possibly next year to grapple with a wide range of global and regional issues.
Japan and Germany held their first high-level intergovernmental dialogue involving several cabinet members in March 2023, when Scholz, who took office two months after Kishida became premier in October 2021, visited Tokyo.
Kishida traveled to Germany after attending a NATO summit in Washington. In a speech during the meeting, he expressed “grave concern” over North Korea’s deepening military cooperation with Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Japan, meanwhile, believes escalating China-Taiwan tensions are among the most serious security challenges, with Beijing viewing the self-ruled democratic island as a renegade province to be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.
Kishida and Scholz met as their countries’ acquisition and cross-servicing agreement (ACSA), which simplifies the process of sharing food, fuel and ammunition between Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and the German military.
A German frigate is scheduled to make a port call in Japan this summer, while a Maritime Self-Defense Force training squadron is planning to stop in the European nation’s northern city of Hamburg, Japanese officials said.
Kishida and Scholz reaffirmed that the defense and foreign ministers of the two countries will hold “two-plus-two” security talks in Japan at an early date. The first such meeting took place in 2021 in a virtual format.
On economic security, the Japanese and German leaders discussed how to work in tandem to strengthen a free and fair global trade order, while confirming their cooperation to bolster supply chains of hydrogen, semiconductors and critical mineral resources.
