“It’s with a very busy schedule that Emmanuel Macron arrived on Tuesday [31 March] in Tokyo,” announces the South China Morning Post. Facing him during this three-day state visit – his fourth in the country since 2017 – “a receptive audience within a concerned Japanese government about its threatened oil supplies and seeking support given its current diplomatic differences with Beijing,” assesses the Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper.
The French president is then expected in South Korea on 2 and 3 April, a first in almost nine years of office. These trips aim to “strengthen France’s relations with its Asian allies, at a time when its government must deal with unpredictable US relations and an increasingly assertive China, all in the context of the Middle East conflict,” specifies the Japanese magazine Nikkei Asia.
In Tokyo, “defense and financial security issues” were on the agenda of discussions between Emmanuel Macron and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, highlights Bloomberg. The two countries were planning to discuss maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz, “even if French and Japanese officials emphasized that it could not be”
