(Central News Agency) Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said today that he told Western leaders that East Asia could become the next Ukraine, and he called for a united front against a rising China and a belligerent North Korea.

Agence France-Presse reported that Japan is the rotating chairman of the Group of Seven (Group of Seven) this year. Kishida has visited member states other than Germany and held talks with US President Joe Biden yesterday.

At the end of his trip in Washington, he said he expressed "a strong sense of crisis in the security environment in East Asia" to other G7 leaders.

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"The situation in Ukraine may be what East Asia will face tomorrow," Kishida told a news conference.

He pointed out: "The situation in Japan's surrounding areas is becoming more and more serious, because some people intend to change the status quo in the East China Sea and South China Sea unilaterally, and North Korea's nuclear and missile activities are likely to intensify."

Kishida did not name them, but it is clear that these remarks refer to China's increasingly assertive attitude towards the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

During a large-scale military exercise near Taiwan in August, China fired missiles into the waters of Japan's exclusive economic zone.

However, Kishida said Japan had not yet decided whether to join the United States in restricting Chinese imports of semiconductors that are critical to advanced technology.

He said: "For the United States and like-minded countries, semiconductors are critical to economic security. We need to communicate more closely and think about how to deal with this issue." 1120115