Japan’s balancing act has gotten increasingly more challenging over the years. Tasked with trying to placate both China, its powerful neighbor, and the United States, its long-time ally and protector, Tokyo’s delicate balancing act is becoming ever more difficult to sustain.

The key to correcting misunderstandings is more exchanges and cooperation between provinces, states, cities, enterprises and nonprofit organizations. We should strive to understand each other’s systems and policies.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s suggestion that issues in relations with China should be categorized according to their sensitivity is unrealistic. Yet progress was made at the Anchorage dialogue, including agreement that cooperation is necessary to address global challenges and that the focus ought to be on healthy competition.

In his recent address to the US Congress, President Joe Biden warned that China is deadly serious about trying to become the world’s most significant power. But Biden also declared that autocrats will not win the future; America will. If mishandled, the US-China great-power competition could be dangerous. But if the United States plays it right, the rivalry with China could be healthy.

The U.S.’s China Policy directly impacts Canada’s China Policy. And with little change in U.S.-China relations under the Biden Administration, Canada’s policy space between China and the U.S. has stayed relatively the same as well.

Australia’s outlier history as a “Western” nation situated in the Pacific means it’s caught in the middle of simmering global tensions between China and the U.S.

The China-Japan relationship is like a ship forging ahead against the wind. But it’s also drifting in the current and will move backward if it fails to move ahead. Their ties in the new era need to be constantly enriched and exercised.

China’s development was certainly unexpected, especially on such a massive scale and at such great speed. It has challenged the Western mindset that only one path is capable of achieving fruitful outcomes. Times certainly have changed.

The United States needs to reconsider its approach, because what it’s doing now is not working. The key to rebuilding trust and resuming effective communication between the two countries is rejection of the rivalry mentality.

The Biden administration is making their policy toward China clear as they maintain a position emphasizing democratic values and alliances. In contrast to the previous administration, Biden also recognizes the need to invest at home in order to remain competitive with China.