Japan is the rotating chair of the Group of Seven (G7) and a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council in 2023. Since January 9, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has visited France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada. After securing a consensus on the Taiwan Strait with those countries, Kishida held a summit meeting with President Biden on January 13 and issued a statement reiterating that “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are indispensable elements of international security and prosperity.”

In December 2022 the South Korean government unveiled its first-ever Indo-Pacific Strategy report Strategy for a Free, Peaceful, and Prosperous Indo-Pacific Region. The report has attracted international attention, not only because it is the first Indo-Pacific strategy released as a publication by a country in the region, but also because of the policy positions and views it contains.

In December 2022, India and China relations once again suffered a setback as India had to counter against yet another transgression by Chinese troops across the disputed border, the Line of Actual Control (LAC). This marked the second major such clash in just two years – the first occurred at the Galwan Valley in June 2020.

Although not a new development, interest in minilateral cooperation in the Indo-Pacific is on the rise, in part driven by perceptions that multilateralism has failed to deliver solutions to global challenges. Dealing with a changing balance of power in Asia has pulled like-minded countries closer, interested in upgrading existing bilateral and trilateral partnerships and making them more robust and result-oriented. In the context of growing Chinese hostility affecting the entire region, Taiwan’s geostrategic relevance has increased.

Japan released a new edition of its National Security Strategy on December 16, 2022. It is a manifestation of Japan’s high spirit for national defense as it faces a radical shift in the regional balance of power amid intensifying geopolitical rivalry.

When President Jimmy Carter and his national security adviser Zbigniew Bzrezinski in 1979 carried out the China-Taiwan switch in diplomatic relations that their counterparts Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had planned, a shocked U.S. Congress reacted with angry dispatch.

On December 26, 2022, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held a cabinet meeting and approved revisions to the “National Security Strategy,” which covers the direction of Japan’s foreign and security policies. This was the first revision in 10 years since the National Security Strategy was formulated in 2013.

On December 7, 2022, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China changed its epidemic prevention policy, mainly to better coordinate epidemic prevention and control and economic and social development. To avoid the rapid deterioration of the epidemic, it the regime saw it as necessary to strengthen the coordination of various policies and optimize epidemic prevention and control measures.

Since President Biden took office, the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have remained on a bumpy relationship left over from the Trump administration on issues such as the Covid pandemic, trade and technology, and so on. Sino-American relations have continued to deteriorate due to Beijing’s position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, in particular, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August.

News of Malaysia’s long-time opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s election as Malaysia’s 10th prime minister did not only make waves in the country but also worldwide. Anwar’s election received extensive media coverage as it marks a comeback from the two occasions when he was head of state in the 1990s.