The European Union will have to face more than American disapproval for its dangerous yuan-fishing:
Japan's concern about the European Union lifting its arms embargo on China will be high on the agenda when the leaders of Japan and France meet Sunday in Tokyo. "Considering stability in Asia, the United States and Japan share the awareness that resuming arms exports would be a big problem," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda told a Tokyo press conference Friday. "That issue is significant, and the chances are high that it will be taken up in some form" during the leaders' meeting, said Hosoda, the Japanese government's top spokesman.
Sino-sympathizers, enablers, relativists and other contrarians might be quick to dismiss Japan as Washington's errand boy; if Tokyo stands firm, they'd settle with a cynic's take on Japan's immediate regional interests, since the island nation has done business with some unsavory parties. Eventually, however, they must consider that America will no longer be the only able democracy whose patience for regimes dedicated to the violent repossession of human dignity has run out, determined to replace the policy of admission with one of prosecution.