There was nothing inevitable about Japan’s emergence as Australia’s closest friend in Asia when Shinzo Abe became prime minister for the second time in 2012. But his steadfast commitment to elevating the relationship could not have come at a more important time.
It came as Xi Jinping seized his hour, as he became general secretary of the Chinese Communist party in the same year, to lead its charge towards claiming regional hegemony through economic weaponisation, through rapid modernisation of the military and its projection by sea and air, and through pushing for control of international discourse.
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Rowan Callick is an industry fellow with Griffith University’s Asia Institute, and a former Asia-Pacific editor of The Australian and The Australian Financial Review
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