A reconsideration of Rui Sasaki’s 2020 essay on Uyghur human rights abuses, China’s “invisible invasion,” Hong Kong, Japan’s China policy, and the risks of supply-chain dependence.

The Tragedy of the Uyghurs Is Not Someone Else’s Problem: China’s “Invisible Invasion” and Japan’s Political, Bureaucratic, and Business Accommodation
Original publication date: July 18, 2020
Commentary added: July 23, 2026
Introductory statement published on July 18, 2020
Any Japanese person who regards the suffering of the Uyghurs as somebody else’s problem is being extraordinarily complacent.
Such a person resembles an insect that approaches an orchid mantis disguised as a flower and is easily devoured.
Source material
Rui Sasaki, “LDP Secretary-General Nikai, Keidanren and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: The Pro-China Trio Left Behind by the Global Tide”
Published: July 17, 2020
Updated: July 17, 2020
Originally published in the August 2020 issue of WiLL
The world was reassessing its strategy toward China amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet some people in Japan were still unable to keep pace with that change.
An “Invisible Invasion” of Japan
Professor Clive Hamilton’s book Silent Invasion attracted considerable attention.
In my books The Silent Invasion of Japan and The Day Japan Disappears, both published by Heart Publishing, I described the reality of the “invisible invasion” of Japan, drawing on a written interview with Professor Hamilton.
It is difficult to confront because those involved approach quietly and almost without being noticed.
Regarding what he described as China’s expansionist nature, I found an essay by Katsuo Hiizumi, professor emeritus at Aichi Prefectural University, particularly interesting.
It was titled “The Relationship Between Italy’s Coronavirus Crisis and the Historic Mass Migration of Chinese People” and appeared on the international affairs website Foresight.
I telephoned Professor Hiizumi to discuss the essay.
According to his argument, the Han Chinese who emerged in the Central Plain along the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, the birthplace of Chinese civilisation, still retain what he calls a “migration and settlement gene.”
They do not necessarily plan an armed invasion.
Instead, he argues, they carry bedding with them, repeatedly move into fertile lands inhabited by other peoples and eventually take control.
This is connected, in his view, to the Chinese Communist Party’s “charm offensive” and “smile diplomacy.”
Hiizumi also argued that this pattern of movement was an important factor behind the explosive spread of the coronavirus in Italy.
He said that “the Japanese are the people in the world who understand these characteristics of the Han Chinese least.”
The Han Chinese known to the Japanese are the people who left behind the Four Books and Five Classics, composed Chinese poetry and performed Peking opera.
The Japanese, he argued, do not understand what he characterised as their underlying tendency to consume unusual foods, migrate repeatedly and take control of new lands.
He claimed that this tendency could be seen in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where Han Chinese settlers had arrived.
At first, he wrote, the settlers lived peacefully with the Uyghurs.
Eventually, however, they acted in concert with the central government and declared, “This has been Chinese, or Han Chinese, territory for four thousand years.”
The People’s Liberation Army then poured into the region and began hunting down Uyghurs, a campaign that, he wrote, continued at the time.
Any Japanese person who regards the suffering of the Uyghurs as somebody else’s problem is being extraordinarily complacent.
Such a person resembles an insect that approaches an orchid mantis disguised as a flower and is easily devoured.
At Shibazono housing complex in Kawaguchi, Saitama Prefecture, foreigners, including Chinese nationals, accounted for more than half of approximately five thousand residents.
Their number had overtaken that of Japanese residents several years earlier.
I have no intention whatsoever of claiming that every Chinese resident is an invader.
Nevertheless, the rapid increase in the population and the continuing complaints from local residents were, the article argued, realities that could not be ignored.
Residents complained about loud conversations continuing from early morning until late at night, children shouting or crying, and incidents involving children leaving human waste in elevators or on staircase landings.
There is also an extensive area in Mihama Ward, Chiba City, sometimes referred to as a “Chinese housing complex.”
A residents’ association chairman told me that, while residents were discussing rubbish separation and the use of parking spaces, a Chinese man who had been cautioned became angry and threatened, “We will take over this housing complex.”
Pressure Through Soka Gakkai
The issue was not confined to housing estates in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
Proposals to establish “Chinatowns” in the name of business had emerged in such places as the centre of Susukino in Sapporo and the Airin district of Nishinari Ward in Osaka, an area historically associated with day labourers.
The author warned that such new Chinatowns could become new settlement bases, eventually developing into Chinese enclaves or areas in which Japanese law and administration were difficult to enforce.
The only “achievement” of what the original article called the Wuhan virus, he wrote, was that it exposed and reminded the public of the pro-China figures in Japan’s political, bureaucratic and business establishments who failed to understand the true nature of the Chinese state.
“The spirit behind China’s support for Japan cannot be measured in money.”
“We must spend our entire lives repaying China’s goodwill.”
These remarks were made in an exclusive interview with Hong Kong’s Phoenix Television on March 12.
“It is not appropriate to comment on the political actions of another country.
Would it not be sufficient to observe the situation carefully?”
This statement was made at a press conference on June 1.
The speaker was Toshihiro Nikai, then secretary-general of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party.
The first remarks concerned the donation of one million masks by Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
The second concerned China’s decision to introduce a national security law in Hong Kong that restricted freedom of speech, assembly and the press.
The author argued that Nikai must have understood that the law suppressed Hong Kong and undermined the internationally promised principle of “one country, two systems.”
Adventure World in Wakayama Prefecture, Nikai’s home prefecture, then housed six pandas, compared with three at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo.
In Ueno’s case, the panda loan fee was reportedly 950,000 US dollars a year under a ten-year agreement.
Adventure World, being privately operated, did not disclose its payment, but the author assumed that it was of a similar scale.
The article argued that the panda’s ability to lower human suspicion had turned it into an instrument of the Chinese Communist Party’s charm offensive.
The issue was not that Japan should refrain from expressing gratitude for donated masks.
The problem, the author argued, was that a senior governing-party official had appeared to abandon the people of Hong Kong and disrupt coordination with the United States, while enthusiastically expressing gratitude for the masks.
How, he asked, would such behaviour appear to people elsewhere in the world?
Even if the people of Hong Kong and Western governments felt anger at Nikai’s position, the Chinese Communist Party would not necessarily celebrate.
It would merely conclude that a person it had cultivated had behaved according to the expected script.
The author regarded Nikai as a committed supporter of closer relations with China and argued that many other Japanese legislators had probably been subjected to intensive Chinese influence operations.
The principal methods, he wrote, were intimidation and conciliation.
Intimidation allegedly took the form of pressure conveyed through Komeito and its supporting organisation, Soka Gakkai, both of which had maintained friendly relations with China.
Politicians could allegedly be told that they would receive no cooperation in the next election.
The author said he had heard that a legislator belonging to the Japan–Tibet Parliamentary Group had been told by a political minister at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo, “We will make sure you lose the election.”
According to the account, this meant that Soka Gakkai votes would not be directed to that politician.
At the same time, politicians who were favourable toward China could be invited there, introduced to senior Communist Party officials and allowed to have commemorative photographs taken with them.
Politicians lacking firm views on national sovereignty and security, and motivated by immediate electoral advantage or personal prestige, could easily be manipulated in this manner.
The Japanese government, the article continued, was also failing to act decisively.
Regarding the national security law, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga stated at a May 28 press conference only that Japan was “deeply concerned about the situation in Hong Kong.”
He did not use words such as “condemnation” or “protest.”
The author argued that such language was wholly inadequate.
Although Xi Jinping’s state visit to Japan had been abandoned for that year and was expected to be postponed indefinitely, the government appeared far too anxious to avoid “provoking China.”
An Anachronistic Ministry of Foreign Affairs
No matter how often Suga claimed that Japan’s response was supported by the United States and the United Kingdom, the author regarded Japan’s failure to coordinate with the Trump administration’s moves toward sanctions as a regrettably weak diplomatic posture.
He speculated that President Trump must have been deeply frustrated by Japan’s timidity.
China was seeking to drive a wedge between Japan, the United States and Europe.
If China concluded that Japan was the easiest country to influence, relations between Japan and Western countries could deteriorate as their confrontation with China deepened.
A senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs official was quoted as explaining the Japanese government’s reaction in the following terms:
“Does everyone condemning China really serve the national interest?
Precisely because the situation is like this, we must communicate even more closely with China.”
The quotation was attributed to the electronic edition of the Sankei Shimbun on May 30.
How long, the author asked, would the Ministry of Foreign Affairs continue to repeat the same argument?
With a new era of US–China confrontation beginning, he argued, the time when Japan could maintain an equally accommodating position toward both powers had ended.
He linked Japan’s failure to condemn China with repeated entries by Chinese government vessels into the contiguous zone and territorial waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands, as well as an alleged attempt to seize a Japanese fishing vessel in May.
More than ten Japanese employees of private companies were also reportedly being detained in China at the time without the alleged offences being publicly disclosed.
Apparently frustrated by what the author regarded as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ accommodating attitude, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that Japan would seek to lead the preparation of a joint G7 statement on Hong Kong’s national security law.
The author called for a strong message that would not be reduced by the Ministry to the language of “deep concern.”
Keidanren as a Tribute Mission
The author also regarded the Japanese business community’s accommodation of China as a serious problem.
He described three organisations in particular—Keidanren, the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Japan-China Economic Association—as resembling a tribute mission.
In September of the previous year, representatives of all three organisations travelled to China.
They respectfully bowed to Premier Li Keqiang and declared that Japan’s entire business community would welcome Xi Jinping’s planned visit to Japan.
Behind the scenes, according to an account cited by the author, they had also urged the Prime Minister’s Office not to provoke China.
In October 2018, approximately five hundred Japanese business leaders accompanied Prime Minister Abe on a visit to China.
Despite having been strongly warned against excessive involvement with China in a speech by US Vice President Mike Pence shortly before the visit, the author argued that they behaved like subjects performing the “three kneelings and nine prostrations.”
This was a ritual of submission to a Qing emperor, involving kneeling once and bowing the head three times, repeated on three occasions.
Did the business delegation raise the cases of their fellow Japanese businesspeople detained in China?
Or, the author asked, did they merely flatter Chinese leaders in the hope of obtaining favourable business treatment?
Yang Haiying, a Chinese-born professor at Shizuoka University, described the meeting in the following terms:
“At the opening of the talks, Japanese business leaders bowed deeply while Premier Li remained expressionless.
The scene resembled a premodern tribute mission appearing before an emperor.”
The comment was attributed to Newsweek Japan on October 25, 2018.
In contrast to what the author regarded as the weakness of the Japanese business community, he believed President Trump was acting seriously.
Unless Japan fundamentally reconsidered its dependence on China in its supply chains, Japanese companies themselves could become subject to sanctions.
An Opportunity to Reduce Dependence on China
The coronavirus outbreak exposed the extent and danger of Japanese corporate dependence on China in areas ranging from automobile manufacturing to masks, disinfectants and other sanitary products.
If China were deliberately to halt production or exports, the author warned, the Japanese economy could be suffocated.
China’s share of Japan’s total imports had risen from 14.5 percent in 2000 to 23.5 percent in 2019.
China accounted for 21.1 percent of Japan’s imports of intermediate goods, compared with 16.3 percent for the United States, giving Japan the highest proportion among advanced countries.
The figures were attributed to Reuters on May 1.
Correcting this imbalance, the author argued, had to be the starting point.
Countless Japanese companies, ranging from small and medium-sized enterprises to major corporations such as Toyota, had established operations in China.
What was not widely understood, however, was that the greatest China-related risk could arise not when entering the Chinese market but when attempting to leave it.
Because the withdrawal of a Japanese company could damage China’s economy, particularly through lost employment, Chinese authorities could make departure difficult.
Companies could be confronted with labour or tax claims, required to make extremely large payments and ultimately prevented from withdrawing.
Language barriers and inadequate knowledge of Chinese domestic law also created high hurdles.
The situation became still more complicated when a company had established a joint venture with a Chinese partner.
Rather than leaving each company to act alone, the author recommended establishing specialist withdrawal teams involving accounting, taxation and other experts.
Even if this required significant expenditure, it would be the more prudent and ultimately less expensive course, particularly when compared with the possibility of large additional tax assessments.
China-related risks also included the possibility of US sanctions against Japanese companies.
In the summer of 2018, the United States enacted the Export Control Reform Act, or ECRA, through the National Defense Authorization Act.
ECRA restricted the export, primarily to China, of American advanced technologies and technologies that could be adapted for weapons.
The author described it as a new version of COCOM—the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls—directed toward China.
The seriousness of the US position could be seen in the inclusion of biotechnology, artificial intelligence and other advanced fields.
These areas overlapped with industries designated under the “Made in China 2025” programme.
The restrictions demonstrated a strong American determination to prevent further transfers of advanced technology to China.
Because exports of such products would in principle be prohibited, Japan also needed to reassess joint development with Chinese companies and industry–university research projects.
Otherwise, Japanese organisations could face sanctions for violating ECRA.
China was also recruiting overseas researchers through the state-backed Thousand Talents Plan.
Regrettably, the author wrote, many Japanese researchers were participating.
Their involvement had to be reviewed not only from the standpoint of Japan’s loss of intellectual talent but also in relation to possible ECRA violations.
The coronavirus crisis, he concluded, had taught Japan to consider withdrawing from China across a wide range of sectors, from the automobile industry, which was promoting AI-powered autonomous driving in partnership with Chinese information-technology companies, to the apparel industry.
Japan possessed manufacturing skills, traditions and originality developed over the course of its history.
Reducing dependence on China would also contribute to correcting China’s unfair trade practices.
The author stated that his new book, scheduled for publication by Heart Publishing in July, examined China’s “silent invasion of Japan” and the case for reducing dependence on China in greater detail.
Rui Sasaki
Born in Tokyo in 1964.
After graduating from Waseda University, Sasaki joined the Sankei Shimbun.
He became known as an investigative reporter through his coverage of the Tokyo subway sarin attack.
He later worked as a political reporter, covering the Prime Minister’s Office and serving as chief of the Liberal Democratic Party press club before becoming deputy political editor.
After four years as Washington bureau chief, he became deputy chairman of the editorial board in October 2018.
As an editorial writer, he also appeared on Yomiuri Television’s Takajin no Soko Made Itte Iinkai and became known as one of the Sankei Shimbun’s prominent commentators.
His books include Why Are Japanese People So Indulgent Toward Koreans?, The Silent Invasion of Japan and The Day Japan Disappears.