Geopolitics and Security to top agenda as PM visits NZ’s “best friend in Asia” - Japan

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is scheduled to visit Japan this weekend, accompanied by a robust business delegation. During his time in Tokyo, he aims to enhance bilateral relations in trade, space cooperation, and rugby. Philip Turner, the former New Zealand Ambassador to Korea and now stationed in Japan, emphasises the importance of Luxon's visit to what he calls New Zealand's "best friend in Asia." The discussions are expected to cover not only business and sports but also regional security.

Visits to Japan by New Zealand Prime Ministers have traditionally been all about trade.

Media coverage of the last visit by a PM in 2022 was dominated by Jacinda Ardern at an event featuring giant dancing kiwifruit.

In visiting Japan next week, PM Luxon has indicated business and tourism will again be on his agenda – but this time the top priority is likely not to be trade, but the security of the Indo-Pacific.

Sharing rising anxiety about China and Russia, Luxon and PM Kishida have an important opportunity to take their relationship to another level, built around shared values and protecting the rules-based order which has provided so much benefit to both countries.

As China’s rise has created both wealth and anxiety around the region, Japan has emerged in recent years as New Zealand’s best friend in Asia.

Asia New Zealand Foundation's Perceptions of Asia survey held in 2022 found 72% of New Zealanders rated Japan as a friend, the highest in the region and ahead of Singapore and South Korea. 

In a sign of the times, and perhaps as a shock to senior folk who recall the Pacific War, 52% also cited Japan as an important defence and security partner.

Asia New Zealand Foundation's 2022 Perception of Asia shows that Kiwis perceive Japan as a friend and an ally. Photo: AMC

Since that survey, China’s actions in the region have only reinforced anxieties among its neighbours. 

Japanese leaders have lately used uncharacteristically dramatic language in outlining their concerns.

In April, Prime Minister Kishida told the US Congress that China's recent actions present  “the greatest strategic challenge…to the peace and stability of the international community at large”.

At the Shangri-la dialogue in Singapore last week, Defence Minister Minoru Kihara maintained the region was “standing at history’s turning point…Whether the world of tomorrow will enjoy peace and prosperity or will experience more instability – the moment of truth is now”.

Like many regional countries at the conference, he pointed to recent aggressive Chinese actions (while not citing China by name) across the Taiwan Strait and “unilateral changes to the status quo by force or coercion... in the East and South China Seas”. 

In an unsettling reminder of how supposedly buried tensions can resurface, he also warned that Russia had increased military activities in “an inherent territory of Japan where Russia’s illegal occupation still continues” - the Kuril Islands, which Japan calls the ‘Northern Territories’.

Following the path of former PM Abe, Japan has steadily revised its interpretation of its “peace constitution” in recent years, committing to raising defence spending to 2% of GDP, and strengthening defence cooperation and military training with neighbours including the Philippines, Australia and South Korea. 

Japan is keen to build collaboration with “like-minded countries and partners” including NATO and its regional partners - whom the NZ-US Joint Declaration in April described as “the four Indo-Pacific democracies” of New Zealand, Australia, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

In a gesture that will be welcomed in Wellington, Kihara underlined Japan’s support for the “centrality, unity and ownership” of the Pacific under the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.

In addressing the same conference, Defence Minister Judith Collins welcomed AUKUS  “as an initiative to enhance regional security and stability”, and promised New Zealand “will be increasing the energy we bring to our international security partnerships”.

Ironically, given its peace constitution and shared allergy to nuclear weapons, Japan is way more hawkish than New Zealand on security issues.

This reflects its proximity to China (at its closest point Japan is only 409 km from the Chinese border), its discomfort with recent Chinese and Russian actions, and public opinion.  A poll in November showed an astounding 92% of Japanese had negative views of China.

Japan has worked hard in recent years to build ‘mini-lateral’ combinations such as the Quad, and security arrangements with Australia, South Korea and the Philippines.  

Collins maintained that NATO does not seek a role in the Indo-Pacific, but it is not clear that all in NATO agree with her.  Japan for one would certainly like to see NATO doing more in the region.  Last year Japan invited NATO to set up an office in Tokyo.

Yet while increasingly tough-minded, Japan’s stance stops short of some of the extreme positions coming out of Washington recently – such as the view that the US should seek ‘victory’ and regime change in China. 

Japan’s preferred stance, as stated by Kihara, is to deter bad behaviour and uphold international law, not to try to stop China’s economic growth. 

Japan, he said, wants to “deter unilateral changes to the status quo by force… while supporting countries facing aggression in violation of international law or threats of force”. 

Geopolitics shaping the trade environment

The prominence of security issues does not mean trade has gone away.  Geopolitics is already shaping trade and economic patterns in the region. 

Despite the US’ anti-trade stance and withdrawal from CPTPP, US economic engagement with the region has actually grown in the last two years. 

The US is now once again the largest export market for Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.  

US imports from China have fallen substantially in the last 18 months, while China’s trade has shifted to Russia (profiting from the Ukraine invasion), the BRICs and the Global South.

Scope for New Zealand to push for further trade liberalization on this trip is limited. 

The CPTPP has finally delivered NZ a de facto FTA after decades of trying (all tariffs on meat, protein, horticulture, forestry and fish will go to zero under CPTPP).

CPTPP provides one major challenge in China’s application to join.  If China were allowed to join it would provide a huge boost to the agreement. 

Many in New Zealand would support that, but with Japan (and probably the UK and Australia) strongly opposed, progress is unlikely for some time.

Instead Japan, New Zealand, and other regional partners are working on the IPEF - a lightweight US-led economic framework. 

Trade Minister Todd McClay signed three small agreements under IPEF (on anti-corruption, labour standards, and tax cooperation) in Singapore this month ahead of his visit to Japan. 

With little scope for new trade rules, Luxon and McClay will be seeking to expand trade within the current frameworks.   Current numbers suggest there is good scope for growth.

Japan’s economy is weighed down by population decline, depressed demand and slowing productivity, yet it remains New Zealand’s fourth largest export market, with two-way trade worth NZ$2.091 billion in the year to March 2024.

Tourism continues to recover from COVID, albeit yet to the levels of 2019.

In March, visitors to New Zealand rose by 34,000 to 60,000. 

New Zealanders are flocking to Japan to take advantage of its safe and stable environment, not to mention the cheap yen.

The economy feels on the move.

Tokyo’s stock market has returned to record highs, and inward investment is surging in sectors from real estate to high tech manufacturing. 

Businesses looking to diversify from China are drawn to Japan’s stability, openness, rule of law, and low costs.  With Hong Kong losing its legal autonomy and Singapore eye-wateringly expensive, Tokyo (and Seoul) stand out as attractive alternatives in East Asia.

Japan continues to attract more foreign visitors due to its safe and stable environment, and low prices. Photo: AMC

Bridging Asia and the Anglosphere

Yet the political and security opportunities that Japan offers may be the most important for New Zealand in the longer-term.

Last month, Japan was invited to join Pillar 2 of AUKUS.

New Zealand is in line for an invitation as well, but the Government faces feisty domestic concern that doing so would imperil our putative independent foreign policy.

Leaders and commentators in both Japan and the US have suggested that Japan should join the Five Eyes arrangement.   

The Ardern-Kishida joint declaration of 2022 contained agreement to create a “legal framework for the reciprocal protection of classified information” – which sounds like spadework for Japan to join Five Eyes.   A key focus next week will be whether Luxon and Kishida take that issue further.

Having Japan as a fellow member of Five Eyes or AUKUS (or both) would make such a choice easier for the Luxon government.

While NZ’s economic ties are increasingly diverse and Asia-dominated, its support for Five Eyes and AUKUS reinforces the sense that New Zealand’s security policy is still locked into an obsolete Anglosphere, at odds with its burgeoning Asian and Pacific relationships  and identity.

The latest census highlights the increasing non-Anglo nature of New Zealand’s make-up, with Maori, and Asian ethnicities each approaching 20% of the total population. 

In security terms, AUKUS would be more powerful as a deterrent if it included at least one country actually in Asia.

For New Zealand, joining Japan in formal security relationships in NATO, Five Eyes or AUKUS, would knit it more closely into the emerging web of regional security relationships.

Domestically, it could build support among New Zealanders – both traditionalists and post-colonialists – for efforts to deter bad actors in the region, and lessen the risk of perceived subservience to the US.

Of course, both Wellington and Tokyo will be highly mindful of opposition from China – a view certain to be repeated by Premier Li Qiang when he sits down with Luxon in Wellington this week.

Next week in Tokyo, Luxon has the chance to do more than just sell more things and lure more tourists. 

He has the opportunity to take the relationship with Japan from what it is today – strong, mutually valued but hardly intimate – to the next level of commitment around shared interests and values.  After all New Zealanders see Japan as their best friend in Asia.

-Asia Media Centre