Preventing free fall of China-Japan ties

The distance between Tokyo and Beijing is greater than that between Beijing and Washington DC.

If you were a geography teacher in an elementary school, you would fail the student who wrote the above sentence. But from the perspective of the current political communication between Japan, China and the United States, there is nothing wrong with this expression.

The so-called China-US rivalry has intensified in recent years. Yet China and the US have been trying at the highest levels to normalize bilateral relations since President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden held a summit last November. More recently, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen visited China. Communications at such levels may not end tensions, but they will undoubtedly set guardrails for bilateral relations.