They're not identical markets.

Both Japan and the EU (Germany with the world's largest trade surplus) have larger export markets in relation to the size of their economies than the US does. That's also one reason the US runs perpetually large trade deficits with Japan and the EU.

US exports to China haven't gone up meaningfully since 2013 (in fact they declined 2013 vs 2015/2016). That's not the case with the EU and Japan. Has nothing to do with the trade war, which didn't exist in 2013-2016, it has to do with what (and where) the US manufactures and exports.

It's also worth noting that Chinese manufacturing is to one extent or another a representation (proxy) for the US consumer economy, since major US corporations utilize China for so much manufacturing (part of the where and why reference in the last paragraph). US companies make products in China and then sell them to US consumers, which complicates the import/export discussion. This is pointed out constantly in critical discussions (eg about the environment or labor & wages), and ignored in discussions like these where it's an inconvenient fact. Over time the EU and Japan have outsourced less of their major manufacturing to China than what the US has.

If you look at the graph I provided and zoom out to the 5 year chart, you would see a fairly large drop in Chinese imports around 2015-16. Part of that might have been due to commodity price drops, but I suspect the correlation of US export to China with Chinese total import is higher than you gave credit for, in a normal year that is.