This article examines Article 38 of the Hong Kong National Security Law, which claims jurisdiction over conduct committed outside Hong Kong by non-residents, and Article 65, which gives the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress the power to interpret the law.
Originally published on July 17, 2020, it questions the Japanese government’s decision to invite Chinese President Xi Jinping as a state guest despite human rights abuses, the suppression of freedom in Hong Kong, and China’s continuing activities around the Senkaku Islands.

July 17, 2020
There is no “other” whom China believes it should respect and coexist with.
At most, there are only “formidable enemies,” such as the United States or the former Soviet Union.
Because it lacks the ability to coexist with other peoples, it can adopt no policy other than assimilation through overwhelming numbers and armed force.
The following is taken from “President Xi Jinping Aims to Dominate the World,” an instalment of “Dialogues with Montaigne,” a column by Satoshi Kuwabara of the Sankei Shimbun’s Culture Department, published in today’s edition.
Last year, the Japanese government announced that it would invite Chinese President Xi Jinping to Japan as a state guest.
For what possible purpose?
Many Japanese citizens must have asked themselves that question.
The thoroughgoing suppression of human rights in Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang.
Aggression in the South China Sea.
The destruction in practice of the “one country, two systems” arrangement that China promised to maintain in Hong Kong for fifty years.
Repeated incursions by Chinese government vessels into Japan’s territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands, which form part of Ishigaki City in Okinawa Prefecture.
The unilateral development of gas fields near the Japan-China median line in the East China Sea.
The falsification of history.
The worldwide spread of the novel coronavirus following the concealment of information.
And the imposition of the Hong Kong National Security Law, which might properly be called a law of fascism.
The list is endless.
President Xi is the person ultimately responsible for a China that disregards human rights and calmly destroys the international order.
I read all sixty-six articles of the Hong Kong National Security Law, which was imposed on June 30 and which crushes freedom and democracy in Hong Kong.
It appears that President Xi imagines himself to be the ruler of the world.
Article 38 states:
“This Law shall apply to offences under this Law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region.”
In other words, anyone who raises his voice to restore freedom and democracy to Hong Kong may become subject to punishment, regardless of the country or territory in which that person lives.
I have used the airports in Beijing and Shanghai only three times, on each occasion while in transit.
From now on, I must make absolutely certain that I never travel through China.
Even an insignificant person such as myself could conceivably be detained at an airport.
The final blow is Article 65:
“The power of interpretation of this Law shall be vested in the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.”
Once the power of interpretation is in one’s hands, it becomes extremely easy to declare white to be black and pronounce a person guilty.
It resembles the medieval Roman Curia, which mercilessly persecuted those it regarded as heretics.
President Xi apparently imagines himself to be the representative of God.
Professor Yang Haiying of Shizuoka University, who was born in Inner Mongolia, explains the essential danger of the China led by President Xi in his book, A Modern History of Dictatorship in China, published as a Bunshun Shinsho volume:
“There is no ‘other’ whom China believes it should respect and coexist with.”
“At most, there are only ‘formidable enemies,’ such as the United States or the former Soviet Union.”
“Because it lacks the ability to coexist with other peoples, it can adopt no policy other than assimilation through overwhelming numbers and armed force.”
I find this explanation convincing.
In 2015, President Xi proposed what he called a “new model of major-country relations” to US Secretary of State John Kerry and suggested that the Pacific Ocean should be divided and governed between the United States and China.
In Xi’s field of vision, there is no one other than the United States, the “formidable enemy.”
【Do Not Tarnish the Honour of Their Majesties】
Let us return to the question of the state visit.
The website of the Imperial Household Agency contained the following explanation:
“A state guest is a foreign head of state, or a person of equivalent standing, whom the Government officially receives with full ceremony and who is received by the Imperial Family. The invitation and reception of a state guest are decided by the Cabinet. The Imperial reception of a state guest includes a welcoming ceremony centred upon Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress, an audience, a state banquet and visits. Their Majesties and the other members of the Imperial Family receive state guests with sincerity and wholehearted courtesy.”
When deciding whether to invite someone as a state guest, the Government must carefully determine whether that person is worthy of being received with such sincerity by Their Majesties.
On what basis did the Government decide to invite President Xi as a state guest?
The person who immediately comes to mind is Toshihiro Nikai, then Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party and a member of the House of Representatives.
Nikai is widely known for regarding himself as the political heir of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who normalised diplomatic relations between Japan and China in September 1972, and for repeatedly leading delegations of several hundred or several thousand people, principally business leaders, to China.
In May 2015, when Japan-China relations had deteriorated following developments including Japan’s nationalisation of the Senkaku Islands, Nikai led approximately three thousand people to an exchange gathering held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Asked by an accompanying NHK reporter about the significance of the visit, Nikai replied:
“At that time, both China’s leader and Japan’s political leaders needed some kind of opportunity. In that sense, I believe it became something of an epoch-making event. It is important to have the courage to carry out something of that scale.”
There is also another individual.
Uichiro Niwa once described President Xi as giving him “the impression of being comparatively friendly towards Japan and fair-minded.”
Does Niwa now realise how profoundly mistaken that assessment was?
Niwa, who served as chairman of Itochu Corporation and later as Japan’s ambassador to China under a Democratic Party government, once reportedly told the novelist Yusuke Fukada:
“The age of a Greater Chinese Sphere will eventually arrive. Japan should live as a subordinate state of China.”
After leaving his post as ambassador, he also made the following remarks in a weekly magazine:
“Japan, which lacks natural resources, cannot survive without overseas trade. Since the world’s largest market is next door, we should make full use of it.”
That is a formidable commercial instinct.
I do not deny it.
Perhaps Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was struggling to find a way to revive Japan’s persistently stagnant economy, accepted the advice of business leaders who held such views and of Nikai.
It could be described as a bold political decision.
But we must remember something.
Prime Minister Abe had repeatedly advocated throughout the world the “universal values” of freedom, democracy, fundamental human rights, the rule of law and a market economy.
In the end, are immediate material benefits more important than principle?
I do not even wish to imagine it, but if the invitation as a state guest had been realised, images and photographs of Their Majesties conversing with President Xi with the utmost courtesy would have been distributed throughout the world.
Southeast Asian countries suffering from China’s conduct in the South China Sea, and European countries that had finally begun to regard China with caution, would have accused Japan of being so dazzled by China’s enormous market that it had forced Their Majesties to receive a “fascist.”
Nor would that have been the end of the matter.
China would certainly have used the resulting images and photographs for propaganda.
I am reminded of the photograph of Emperor Showa standing beside General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.
MacArthur stands arrogantly in an open-necked shirt, while Emperor Showa stands rigidly upright in formal morning dress.
The photograph was taken on September 27, 1945, when Emperor Showa made his first visit to MacArthur, who presided over the Allied occupation from the Dai-ichi Life Building directly opposite the Imperial Palace.
The photograph powerfully displays the contrast between a victorious country and a defeated one.
It seems to convey the intention of the occupation authorities:
“You are a defeated people, and from now on you will obey our instructions without question.”
A China that calmly falsifies and erases history would devise an even more blatant use for photographs of the Japanese Emperor receiving President Xi.
For the sake of the honour of Their Majesties, the invitation of President Xi Jinping as a state guest should be withdrawn.
※The Japanese translations of the provisions of the Hong Kong National Security Law were based on the version distributed by Xinhua News Agency.