Hiroshi Yuasa’s “Reading the World” in the Sankei Shimbun revealed that a Chinese consul general sent what amounted to a draft resolution praising China to the Wisconsin State Legislature. Through China’s concealment over the Wuhan virus, its rewriting of history and records, its propaganda operations targeting American local politics, and the growing move in Japan, the United States, and Europe to detach supply chains from China, this essay examines the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party regime.

May 6, 2020

The Midwestern state of Missouri, on the contrary, has filed a damages lawsuit in federal district court, arguing that China lied to the world and failed to contain the infection.
China’s propaganda operations targeting local America also seem to be receiving their comeuppance.

I am republishing a chapter first released on May 1, 2020.
The passages between asterisks are my new additions.
The following is from “Reading the World” by Hiroshi Yuasa, guest editorial writer of the Sankei Shimbun, published in today’s Sankei Shimbun under the title “World Division After the Pandemic.”
This essay proves that he is one of the genuine journalists.
The emphases within the text, apart from the headline, and the notes beginning with asterisks are mine.
What is introduced here is something resembling a “resolution” of the Wisconsin State Senate, located near the Great Lakes in the United States.
The reason it is a fake is that it is a skillfully written English composition by the Chinese authorities.
At best, it is a draft.
To put it plainly, it is a counterfeit.
The resolution states that it supports China’s efforts to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus and recommends that the U.S. government cooperate with the World Health Organization, WHO.
Everything in it is the exact opposite of what the Trump administration has been asserting.
It is as if the State Senate were praising China and inducing the U.S. government to cooperate with the China-leaning WHO.
This resolution had been attached as a draft to an e-mail sent by the Chinese consul general in Chicago to Roger Roth, president of the Wisconsin State Senate.
The consul general who sent it had made a blatant request that the State Senate pass a “resolution praising China’s response.”
In order to turn attention away from responsibility for the outbreak of the Wuhan virus, China is entrusting the rewriting of its reputation to a third party.
According to Financial Times reporter Jamil Anderlini, who covered this matter, Senate President Roth was at first half in doubt, then angry, and finally stunned by this blatant intervention in a local legislature by a foreign power.
In response to the lesson in drafting a resolution, President Roth reportedly replied as follows:
“Dear Consul General, nuts.”
Financial Times, April 20.
China rewrites both history and evaluation.
Having failed in its concealment operation, China is trying by force to recover its lost authority, and is instead digging its own grave.
Since it has no shame and no concern for appearances, there is no reason to think that what it asked Wisconsin to do was not also requested of other states.
There is no reason to think that China has not also sent guidance documents to Japan’s opposition politicians, some ruling-party politicians, newspapers such as the Asahi Shimbun, and television media led by NHK.
The Midwestern state of Missouri, on the contrary, has filed a damages lawsuit in federal district court, arguing that China lied to the world and failed to contain the infection.
China’s propaganda operations targeting local America also seem to be receiving their comeuppance.
This column, “Reading the World,” has also witnessed the fact that, regarding what it pointed out in its previous column of April 3, the Chinese side rewrote past descriptions and then pretended nothing had happened.
In the previous column, it was pointed out that Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, had itself used the common name “Wuhan virus,” which the Chinese leadership dislikes, on its English-language website dated January 22.
The column wrote that it was bizarre for Beijing to have officially reported it that way at first, and then to fly into a rage and call it “racist” when U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo later referred to it.
Toward Japan, too, the same method is used as when China brands Japan with “the revival of militarism.”
Political motives are hidden behind the words.
Why have newspapers such as the Asahi Shimbun and opposition politicians repeatedly used the laughable phrase “revival of militarism” to attack the government whenever the opportunity arises? Readers will understand perfectly from this essay.
However, if China itself had called it the Wuhan virus, the story would not add up.
Therefore, around April 3, when this column pointed it out, the headline “Wuhan virus” disappeared from the Xinhua website.
I understood then: this is what it means when China rewrites history.
The Chinese Communist Party tends to rely too much on selfish propaganda warfare, and this produces the opposite effect.
If it were an “ordinary country,” it would first express regret for having allowed the virus to spread throughout the world.
Next, it would provide the international community with detailed data related to the virus, thereby gaining sympathy and respect.
Of course, it would do so with the possibility of a change of government in mind.
That is the tragedy of totalitarianism.
Above all else, it prioritizes the preservation of the regime and runs toward “concealment operations” and “external propaganda.”
When concealment failed, China responded with threats mixed in and jumped onto the conspiracy theory that the U.S. military had spread the virus.
Then it mobilized embassies and consulates scattered around the world and launched a campaign to exaggerate the superiority of its dictatorial governing system.
My reasoning in the preceding passage was completely correct.
Machiavelli, the political thinker of The Prince, who witnessed the great plague epidemic in 16th-century Florence, left behind the words that an explosive outbreak of disease is “the direct result of erroneous rule.”
In this outbreak as well, the failures of the Xi Jinping administration are strengthening the movement to destroy international supply chains.
Professor Wang Jisi, a noted political scientist at Peking University, has stated that U.S.-China relations have reached their worst level, and that the economic and technological decoupling of the United States and China is “already irreversible.”
The United States, which depends on China for the majority of pharmaceutical ingredients, is moving with bipartisan agreement, Republican and Democratic alike, to submit legislation encouraging increased domestic production of pharmaceuticals.
The resolve to accept higher costs.
Europe, which had seen China only as a huge profit-making market, also experienced unprecedented humiliation after China spread the virus throughout the world, sent over inferior medical equipment,
and then took an attitude of making others feel indebted instead of apologizing.
Moreover, while Europe was struggling with the pandemic, it realized that Chinese companies had been moving to acquire companies in advanced technologies such as semiconductors, and anger swirled.
French President Macron cited items for which France would switch from dependence on China to domestic production, and from British cabinet ministers there emerged calls to review the introduction of fifth-generation, 5G, mobile communications networks by Huawei, the major Chinese telecommunications equipment company.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe went even further.
On March 5, the day it was decided to postpone Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Japan, he began rebuilding supply chains as part of emergency economic measures.
At the “Future Investment Council,” chaired by the prime minister, he clearly indicated support for companies that would bring production bases for high value-added products back to Japan, and for companies that would move other production bases to Southeast Asia and elsewhere in order to diversify them.
Why has NHK reported almost nothing about the fact that Prime Minister Abe had decided on the correct hundred-year national policy in response to this great catastrophe? The answer lies in the following lines.
Beijing has received the clear “departure from China” by Japan, the United States, and Europe with shock.
Even before the outbreak of the Wuhan virus, China had been burdened with massive debt and forced into difficult economic management, and it fears most of all that Japan, the United States, and Europe will sever their supply chains.
Some voices from American think tanks are even warning of the “weaponization of pharmaceuticals,” such as the possibility that China may one day manufacture medicines with contaminants.
However, if many of these products are to be made in the West, consumers must be prepared to accept higher costs.
In the end, which will you choose?
Cheap Chinese-made products of doubtful safety, or more expensive but safe domestic products?