Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. spoke with Tomoko Namba, founder of the Japanese Internet company DeNA, during a visit to the company's Tokyo offices. He was joined by Caroline Kennedy, the United States ambassador to Japan, left.
TOKYO — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delivered a carefully-calibrated message of support to Japan on Tuesday, saying the United States had deep concerns with a new air defense zone created by China but stopping short of a demand that Beijing roll it back.
As he began a weeklong trip to Asia that will take him to Beijing, Mr. Biden found himself in the midst of an increasingly tense standoff between Japan and China over Beijing’s creation of a zone of restricted airspace over contested islands in the East China Sea.
Administration officials insisted there was no daylight between the United States and Japan on how to respond to China’s move, despite the Federal Aviation Administration’s advice to American carriers to identify themselves when entering the restricted zone. The Japanese government has instructed its carriers to ignore the Chinese demand.
“Nothing that FAA has done constitutes any acceptance or recognition of this,” said a senior administration official traveling with Mr. Biden. “The U.S. has clearly set forth that our military aircraft will continue to operate normally without regard to the A.D.I.Z.,” he added, using the acronym for air defense identification zone.
“The U.S. government position and the Japanese government position in the A.D.I.Z. are the same,” he said, “insofar as we see this as a provocative and unilateral effort to change the status-quo and it was done in a way that is not in keeping with international norms or practices.”
Still, while the United States said it would urge China not to create any other such restricted zones, officials indicated that they would focus on pressing the Chinese government not to take any provocative actions in patrolling this one, rather than on rolling it back.
The Japanese government has demanded that China roll back the air defense zone, which it perceives as an attempt by the Chinese to assert control over a clump of disputed islands, known in the Japan as the Senkaku and in China as the Diaoyu. The dispute has raised tensions in the region to their highest level in nearly two decades.
For Mr. Biden, the dispute has been a distraction on a trip that he hoped would cover a range of issues, from a trans-Pacific trade agreement to the nuclear threat in North Korea.
Still, Mr. Biden found time to tour a Japanese Internet company founded and run by a female entrepreneur. Joined by Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and Cathy Russell, the State Department’s ambassador at large for global women’s issues, he chatted with five female employees in the banquette at the company’s sleek Tokyo offices.
“Do your husbands like you working full-time?” Mr. Biden asked the women. He also inquired about whether the company, known as DeNA, offered child-care in its office.
Analysts and former diplomats said that reassuring Japan of America’s commitment to the region was particularly important given creeping worries in Tokyo that the United States might no longer have the financial ability, or even the will, to maintain its dominant military position in the Asia-Pacific.
Although the Obama administration registered its displeasure with China’s so-called air defense identification zone by sending two unarmed B-52 bombers on a mission through it, federal regulators, as a safety precaution, advised American civilian flights to identify themselves before entering the airspace — in compliance with the Chinese regulations.
That was viewed by some in Japan as a mixed message, since the Japanese government had told its airlines to ignore the Chinese demand. Japanese newspapers began worrying about “allies no longer walking in lock step,” and government officials sought clarification from Washington.
The State Department quickly said that the advice did not mean that the United States was recognizing the air defense zone. And American officials have told the Japanese that the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision was a safety recommendation — far short of an order, though major American airlines said they were heeding it.
Still, a lingering ambiguity has led Japanese officials to give contradictory assessments of American intentions. On Sunday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters that his government had confirmed through “a diplomatic route” that the United States had not asked airlines to file flight plans with the Chinese.
