On April 16, U.S. President Joe Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the White House, making Suga the first foreign leader to make such a visit under Biden’s presidency. The joint statement after the summit said they ‘underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues.’ The last time a U.S. president and a Japanese prime minister mentioned Taiwan in a joint statement was 1969, years before Washington and Tokyo normalized their diplomatic ties with Beijing. The statement also expressed shared concerns ‘regarding the human rights situations in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.’ This is a welcome development because the political roles of the United States and Japan in their seven-decades-old alliance are experiencing a major shift.