Yang Yi, the first Chinese-born author to win Japan’s Akutagawa Prize, eventually broke her silence over the Chinese Communist regime after reflecting on the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the persecution of Liu Xiaobo, and her family’s suffering during the Cultural Revolution.
This article introduces the arguments presented in her book My Enemy, Xi Jinping, including her view of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan and her call to end the Chinese Communist regime.

2020-06-28
My Enemy, Xi Jinping—Why Akutagawa Prize-Winning Author Yang Yi Calls for the Collapse of the Chinese Communist Regime
The following is taken from the February 26 edition of Sankei Sho.
“Hello.”
When Yang Yi came to Japan from China at the age of twenty-two, this was the only Japanese expression she could understand.
Twenty-one years later, in 2008, she won the Akutagawa Prize.
Her achievement attracted great attention because she was the first Chinese author—and indeed the first author whose native language was not Japanese—to receive the prize.
Her award-winning novel, A Morning When Time Blurs, is based on the Tiananmen Square incident.
It portrays the dreams and frustrations of young people of Yang’s generation who devoted themselves to the pro-democracy movement.
“It is not something about which one can simply conclude that ‘the students were right’ or ‘the government was right.’”
In an interview with this newspaper at the time, she made remarks that kept her distance from politics.
Yang, who had refrained from criticizing the Chinese government, eventually broke her silence.
The catalyst was the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the writer Liu Xiaobo.
He was also a pro-democracy activist who fought on the side of the students during the Tiananmen Square incident.
The Chinese government refused to allow Liu, who was imprisoned at the time, to attend the award ceremony.
As a writer, Yang could not overlook the issue of freedom of expression.
Yang’s family had been sent down to a remote rural village during the Cultural Revolution.
Writing in the monthly magazine Bungeishunju about the history of her family, which had been tossed about by politics, she made an appeal.
She wanted her former homeland to become, as soon as possible, a country where people could speak freely.
An advertisement for Yang’s new book appeared in yesterday’s edition of this newspaper.
My Enemy, Xi Jinping, published by Asuka Shinsha.
It is an extraordinarily bold title.
Its contents are even more radical.
After analyzing various pieces of information, Yang believes that the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan was a biological weapon.
Yang, who has already become a naturalized Japanese citizen, delivers a final verdict on her former homeland.
“For the sake of world peace, there is no choice but to bring down the Chinese Communist regime.”
She poses the following question to the Japanese people, who know both China’s strengths and weaknesses thoroughly.
Can Japan carry out structural reforms that will free its economy from dependence on such a China?