Japan accelerates medical aid diplomacy amid China's rising clout

Japan with its rapidly falling population needs to get serious about offering refugees a chance to live a safe and peaceful life.

Those refugees are much better suited to aid people in their own former countries than native Japanese can ever do by spending vast amounts on manuals, meetings, and machines...

It almost seems like Japan's reasons for doing things nowadays is China driven. Anything China does Japan will bend over backwards to out-spend, out-do or out- shine China. Good deeds done for a vain, even bad motive perhaps ?

Good deeds done for a vain, even bad motive perhaps ?

"Japan: No Yen for Altruism"

read a magazine headline on my first trip here in the 80s. I see that validated every day.

It's useful for those of us influenced by the Abrahamic faiths - and especially recipient nations - to understand that the intrinsic motivators of donors may differ from our own.

Read the small print.

Whatever aid funding that Communist China offers to these poor SE Asian nations, Japan should double it.

China will never win the hearts and minds of these people.

The solution to the world's problems is not mass population transfer. Especially when most of the "refugees" end up being the fittest, youngest, and most able people, leaving the old, sick, and vulnerable behind.

Indeed the so-called solution to Japan's demographic concerns is not to be found in the acceptance of refugees, though the absurdist logic reflecting a notion of Social Darwinism is weird. However, the realpolitik of providing medical assistance is purposeful and even in light of such, is all to the good and humanitarian, no matter the locus. The import of offsetting the purposeful intent of China, employing the same means aka medical assistance, to gain acceptance and permit the further evolution of coercive & less than democratic forms and indeed certain genocidal manias is of grave import. Japan, however imperfect the system, is essentially a democracy and certainly is not involved in the extermination of peoples it deems expendable. Domination by either China or the USA is not a particularly boon for even those who are allies of either.

After three decades of malaise in Japan, it is time for things to change...

Tokyo-mToday 10:28 am JST

The solution to the world's problems is not mass population transfer. Especially when most of the "refugees" end up being the fittest, youngest, and most able people, leaving the old, sick, and vulnerable behind.

No, Japan has the right idea. If you want to help people in other countries, help them there - in their own countries.

Great point! And well said!

There is only one rising power, aside China, is also doing medical support diplomacy across the world as well. They can be far better than Japan because their nation is a manufacturing power with a controlled Covid situation. Vietnam.

https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/vietnam-using-mask-diplomacy-fortify-foreign-relations

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vietnam-diplomacy/vietnam-challenges-chinas-monopoly-on-virus-diplomacy-idUSKCN21S0CH

https://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/vietnamese-firms-ready-to-face-2nd-covid-19-wave-269315-newsdetails.htm

I personally suspect that Japan's medical aids are likely made in either China or Vietnam. For Vietnamese leaders, it doesn't matter as long as Japan provides political and economic favors for the VN. Even if Japan uses the Vietnamese equipments and supplies to bolster their medical diplomacy, when Japan is incapable of amassing anything of such in their own borders.