President Joe Biden is welcoming Japan’s prime minister to the White House on Friday in his first face-to-face meeting with a foreign leader, a choice that reflects Biden’s emphasis on strengthening alliances to deal with a more assertive China and other global challenges. Biden and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga also look to counter messaging from Chinese Leader Xi Jinping that America and democracies, in general, are on the decline. The Biden administration calls managing U.S. policies toward the Indo-Pacific, where the Chinese regime under Xi is flexing growing economic and military power, the primary challenge for the United States. That helped guide Biden’s decision, announced this week, to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and free the administration to focus more on East Asia. For Biden and Suga, “our approach to China and our shared coordination and cooperation on that front will be part of the discussion,” press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday. The …