WASHINGTON, April 16 (AFP) - US President Joe Biden on Friday (Apr 16) welcomed Japan's prime minister as his first guest, pledging a united front faced with a rising China and greater cooperation on 5G technology and climate change.

Waiting nearly three months for his first summit due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden told Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga that Japan had "our iron-clad support" on security issues and beyond.

"We're going to work together to prove that democracies can still compete and win in the 21st century," Biden told a joint, socially distanced news conference in the White House Rose Garden.

"We committed to working together to take on the challenges from China and on issues like the East China Sea, the South China Sea as well as North Korea," he said.

Suga said Biden reaffirmed that the US-Japan Security Treaty covers the Japanese-administered Senkaku islands - one of several areas in the region where Beijing, which calls them the Diaoyu, has increasingly shown its might.

"We agreed to oppose any attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion in the East and South China seas and intimidation of others in the region," Suga said.

"Freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law are the universal values that link our alliance," he said, echoing a frequent theme of Biden.

Suga said he and Biden also "reaffirmed" the "importance of peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait" - an especially sensitive issue for China which claims the self-governing democracy and has recently stepped up penetration of the island's air defenses.

In a highly unusual statement for a Japanese leader, Suga also voiced concern over a wave of attacks in the United States against people of Asian descent.