May 29, 2020. Through Yoshiko Sakurai’s book The Lies of the Pro-China Faction, this chapter examines the name “Wuhan virus,” the Chinese Communist Party’s concealment of information, Wuhan’s concentration of semiconductor and military-related industries, Made in China 2025, and the U.S.-China struggle over 5G dominance. It argues that Japan, having experienced fabricated historical accusations, must recognize the essence of information warfare.

May 29, 2020
As Japanese people who have had lies such as the “Nanjing Massacre” and the “forced taking of comfort women, sex slaves” fabricated against us in the field of historical issues, we cannot simply leave this alone.
That is why I decided to call this virus the Wuhan virus.
The following is from Yoshiko Sakurai’s book, The Lies of the Pro-China Faction, published on May 12.
She is a “national treasure” as defined by Saicho, and one of Japan’s true treasures.
The employees of the Asahi Shimbun and other newspapers, and of NHK and other television stations, must read this with their eyes wide open if they wish to be Japanese people who are “national treasures” rather than “traitors to the nation.”
Those who are not truly Japanese in spirit, but live according to the anti-Japanese propaganda of the Korean Peninsula and China, are another matter.
Except for the headline, emphasis in the text is mine.
Half of the returnees from Wuhan were semiconductor engineers.
Sakurai:
I would like to discuss the problems shown to us by the novel coronavirus that broke out in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.
Before proceeding, I would like to dwell a little on the name of this virus.
Because of excessive consideration toward China in various ways, the release of information to the world from the World Health Organization, WHO, was delayed.
I believe the pressure of the Chinese government was clearly at work.
As a result, the present situation is that the coronavirus is spreading to countries throughout the world.
Amid this, the official name of the virus was set as COVID-19.
Almost at the same time, the Chinese side began to claim that COVID-19 may in fact have been brought into China by the U.S. military.
Japanese people can only smile bitterly at such brazen lies, but if the Chinese side continues to repeat that lie, the history of the outbreak of COVID-19 may be rewritten according to China’s intentions.
As Japanese people who have had lies such as the “Nanjing Massacre” and the “forced taking of comfort women, sex slaves” fabricated against us in the field of historical issues, we cannot simply leave this alone.
That is why I decided to call this virus the Wuhan virus.
The introduction has become long, but through the Wuhan virus issue, China’s national character and constitution have become visible.
Mr. Hosokawa is looking at this problem from his own unique perspective.
Masahiko Hosokawa, hereafter Hosokawa:
On January 23, 2020, China sealed off the city of Wuhan.
Therefore, the Japanese government brought back several hundred Japanese people from Wuhan, China, on chartered flights, but there were things that could be seen from the composition of those returnees.
Wuhan is a cluster of the automobile industry, and Japanese automobile manufacturers have expanded there, so about half of the returnees from Wuhan were people from automobile manufacturers.
But when one looks closely at the remaining people, it turns out that there were in fact many people from semiconductor manufacturers.
I see this from the perspective that this may be an event that makes us think about how Japan should face China.
Sakurai:
There were many reports that Wuhan is a cluster of the automobile industry, but the fact that many semiconductor manufacturers have moved there has not been reported very much.
Akio Yaita, hereafter Yaita:
That is not the only problem.
When you look at Wuhan on a map, it is in the center of China, and there are many mountains around it.
Because of that terrain, China has placed its most important industries around Wuhan since the Mao Zedong era, as one of China’s most strategically important bases.
This is true of semiconductors, but there are also very many military industries.
The P4 laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has become a topic in connection with the Wuhan virus, is said to be a research institute that studies biological weapons, and China has placed all such important things in this inland area.
That is because, if war breaks out and an enemy such as Russia attacks, this is the place least reachable by air strikes.
Both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping placed military command posts in Wuhan.
In that sense, Wuhan is militarily one of the most important places for China, and it is also a place where many military-related industries are concentrated.
Sakurai:
There were many Japanese engineers from the semiconductor industry in Wuhan, which is also militarily important.
How should we understand this?
Hosokawa:
First of all, the most important thing is to know what China is now trying to do.
There is an industrial policy called “Made in China 2025,” announced in 2015 by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Sakurai:
The long-term national strategy of China that became one of the major triggers for the United States to heighten its sense of crisis is “Made in China 2025.”
The ten priority fields listed in it are the following.

1. Next-generation information technology, semiconductors, and the next-generation communications standard 5G.
2. Advanced digitally controlled machine tools and robots.
3. Aerospace equipment, large aircraft, and manned spaceflight.
4. Marine engineering and high-tech ships.
5. Advanced railway equipment.
6. Energy-saving and new-energy vehicles.
7. Power equipment, large-scale hydroelectric power generation, and nuclear power generation.
8. Agricultural machinery, large tractors.
9. New materials, superconducting materials, and nanomaterials.
10. Biomedicine and high-performance medical equipment.
    China raising the self-sufficiency rate of semiconductors.
    Hosokawa:
    China formulated “Made in China 2025” with the goal of strategically raising its self-sufficiency rate from now on and becoming the leader of global manufacturing, and in it China listed the ten major industries as priority fields, as Ms. Sakurai has just shown.
    The first thing listed is semiconductors.
    One of the pillars of “Made in China 2025” is semiconductors.
    And its core base is, in fact, Wuhan.
    China is now trying to build semiconductor factories in various places at tremendous speed.
    The United States is now making a serious issue of Huawei and other Chinese moves, saying that China is trying to dominate the next-generation communications standard 5G.
    That 5G is supported by semiconductors as components.
    Moreover, semiconductors also form the foundation of the military industry.
    China is currently the world’s largest consumer of semiconductors.
    But in fact, it cannot supply them by itself.
    It imports them from overseas.
    China is the world’s largest importer of semiconductors, and this is structurally weak.
    Therefore, it has a sense of crisis that if the United States stops semiconductors, China will dry up, and it is trying to raise its self-sufficiency rate in semiconductors.
    Sakurai:
    China placed the improvement of its semiconductor self-sufficiency rate as the first goal of “Made in China 2025.”
    That shows how strong China’s sense of crisis is.
    Hosokawa:
    That is right.
    China is trying to raise its semiconductor self-sufficiency rate to 70 percent by 2025.
    Right now it is about 15 percent, so China is building factories in various places at tremendous speed.
    In China’s semiconductor industry development plan, something called the “first-stage fund” began in 2014, and 2 trillion yen has been poured into it so far.
    With that money, China is building factories to make semiconductor chips here and there.
    It is bringing in overseas technology more and more.
    I believe that among those methods there are unfair means as well.
    Sakurai:
    Rather than “among them,” there must be quite a lot of them.
    Hosokawa:
    I believe there are quite a lot.
    The United States also sees this as a problem.
    At present, China is also drawing away engineers from Taiwan on the scale of 3,000 people, and it is copying technology from Samsung’s factories in China.
    China is now obtaining “people and technology” from Taiwan and South Korea more and more, including through unfair means, and it is pouring in 2 trillion yen to foster its semiconductor industry.
    In October 2019, China announced the “second-stage fund” of this semiconductor development fund, and this is 3.2 trillion yen.
    What is it trying to do with this “second-stage fund”?
    It is a plan to make it possible to manufacture, in China, the production equipment used to make semiconductors.
    That is because China currently depends on overseas manufacturers in Japan, Europe, the United States, and elsewhere for semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
    No matter how many semiconductor factories it builds, if it depends on foreign countries for manufacturing equipment, it is weak.
    Therefore, China is not only building semiconductor factories, but going further upstream and spending 3.2 trillion yen to make it possible to produce semiconductor manufacturing equipment domestically.
    What is happening in China now is that semiconductor factories are being built almost entirely with government funds.
    Sakurai:
    In other words, the United States is not merely fighting a short-term U.S.-China trade war.
    It sees the next-generation communications standard 5G as a problem and believes that the world must not become one in which China dominates the most advanced technologies.
    The extremely strong measures against Huawei are also intended to prevent such a situation.
    Hosokawa:
    That is right.
    In 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on ZTE, a major Chinese telecommunications company, saying that it was acting unfairly.
    The means of those sanctions was to prohibit the sale of semiconductors from American companies such as Intel and Qualcomm to ZTE.
    As a result, ZTE was helpless and could not continue its business.
    Having learned from this, China is trying to make semiconductors by itself.
    Sakurai:
    ZTE effectively became unable to make telecommunications equipment.
    The effect of America’s sanctions against China is tremendous.
    It is only natural that China was stunned.
    As Mr. Hosokawa pointed out, China’s semiconductor self-sufficiency rate is only about 15 percent.
    Moreover, it does not have semiconductor manufacturing equipment itself.
    Confronted with this harsh reality, China rushed headlong into domestic production.
    I do not like the Chinese Communist Party, but I do think their grit is extraordinary.
    However, the methods are, no matter how one looks at them, unacceptable.
    The war for “network control” has begun.
    Yaita:
    Why is China trying to do everything related to 5G by itself?
    It is because China is trying to compete with the United States for hegemony.
    The slogan of the Xi Jinping administration is “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” and its goal is to defeat the United States and become number one in the world.
    China is competing with the United States in various fields.
    For example, there are such things as “air superiority” and “sea control.”
    In wartime, military control of the air and the sea is extremely important, and it determines superiority in battle.
    At present, in the world of aircraft and ships, the United States is overwhelmingly ahead of China, and China cannot easily catch up.
    China is also working hard on space development, but President Trump created the Space Force.
    China cannot easily defeat America in space either.
    The one area in which China can win is, in fact, the world of the Internet.
    Recently, China has been aiming at “network control,” that is, gaining control of the Internet.
    That is because future wars will make “network control” more important than “air superiority,” “sea control,” or “space control.”
    If one destroys all of the enemy military’s networks before the war begins, one can say that one has already won the war.
    In order to gain that “network control,” China is trying to sell Chinese-standard 5G to countries all over the world, develop their infrastructure, and seize leadership.
    This is far cheaper than other military industries, and it is also effective.
    In that sense, China has been putting tremendous effort into 5G in recent years.
    Sakurai:
    Those who control “network control” will control the world.
    What 5G means does not stop at the field of communications.
    If we compare it to the human body, 5G is like connecting the brain nerves and all the nerve cells throughout the body.
    Just as a human being cannot move without that, society and the state cannot function without it.
    Is it correct to understand 5G as playing such an important function?
    Hosokawa:
    Yes.
    As you point out, it is not only simple communications; transportation, electricity, and other social infrastructure will all be controlled by it.
    Ultimately, as Mr. Yaita just pointed out, it is directly connected to military technology.
    This means that it has more strategic significance than communications have had until now.
    Sakurai:
    We are now extremely afraid that China will seize “network control” and grasp hegemony.
    We feel threatened by the nature of the Chinese Communist Party, which has been revealed in the way it controlled the Wuhan virus, the way it released information, and the way it concealed information.
    China calmly does outrageous things such as concealing information and disregarding human rights.
    What is frightening is that China, a country whose national character permits such things that we cannot accept, may come to control the networks that operate our entire lives.