Based on an essay by Emi Kawaguchi-Mahn published in Hanada, this article introduces the powerful open letter by Bild, Germany’s largest-circulation tabloid, addressed to Chinese President Xi Jinping. It examines China’s responsibility for the coronavirus crisis, intellectual-property theft, and its surveillance-state system, while also discussing the long-standing pro-China and anti-Japanese tendencies in German media.

May 27, 2020
However much they may be lumps of self-tormenting historical consciousness, there are no fools anywhere in the world as great as they are.
How would you feel if the television stations in your country were such fools that they constantly praised a people who, deep in their hearts, look down on them?
The following is from an essay by the writer Emi Kawaguchi-Mahn, published in the monthly magazine Hanada, released yesterday and required reading not only for the Japanese people but for people all over the world, under the title Germany’s No. 1 Mass-Circulation Newspaper Declares War on Xi Jinping.
Ms. Kawaguchi is married to a German and lives in Germany.
Her essay also proves that my arguments about Germans were correct.
Anti-Japanese, pro-China, pro-South Korea Germans.
The Asahi Shimbun has contributed greatly to the creation of such Germans as well.
Whether they know the reality of Germany or not, when television media such as NHK want to criticize the Japanese government, or when they want to demean Japan, they always bring up Germany and praise it.
However much they may be lumps of self-tormenting historical consciousness, there are no fools anywhere in the world as great as they are.
How would you feel if the television stations in your country were such fools that they constantly praised a people who, deep in their hearts, look down on them?
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Mentioning a compensation claim against China
First, let me state the facts.
On April 15, the German daily newspaper Bild carried an article titled “How Much Does China Owe Us?”
The subtitle was, “Bild Presents a Coronavirus Bill.”
It was written by the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Julian Reichelt.
The content was quite radical, arguing that China, which spread the coronavirus, should pay compensation to the world, and it was almost equivalent to a challenge letter.
Reichelt estimated Germany’s claim at 150 billion euros, about 18 trillion yen.
In response, the Chinese Embassy in Berlin immediately published a reply.
It was written by the female spokesperson, Ms. Tao Lili.
In it, she counterattacked harshly, saying, “Leaving aside the fact that it is in poor taste to place the responsibility for an infectious disease from which the whole world is suffering on only one country and demand compensation, this article ignores several obvious facts.”
Normally, at this point, the side criticized by China, that is, Bild, would apologize and the matter would end.
Until now, whether it was Daimler, Dior, or an American professional basketball team, everyone who incurred the anger of the Chinese Embassy met that fate.
But what did Bild’s editor-in-chief Reichelt do?
Astonishingly, on the following evening, he released not an apology but a letter that further intensified the attack.
It was addressed to “President Xi Jinping.”
Moreover, it came with a video in which Reichelt himself read the letter aloud, and that video was also uploaded to YouTube.
The video even had Chinese subtitles.
Though, of course, I do not imagine that it will be made public in mainland China.
“World champion of theft”
The letter begins as follows.
“I have received the open letter addressed to me from your country’s embassy. It came because we raised in Bild the question of whether China should compensate for the enormous economic losses that the coronavirus is now causing throughout the world. Your embassy called that ‘base’ and accused me of inciting nationalism. In response, I would like to say several things.”
Reichelt then set out the following five points in numbered form.
The following is a full translation.
① You govern your country through surveillance. Without surveillance, there is no President Xi. You monitor all your people, but you refuse to monitor markets that pose the danger of infectious disease. While you shut down all critical newspapers and Internet sites, you do not shut down stalls that sell bat soup. You are not only monitoring your people, you are putting them in danger. Not only them, but the entire world.
② Surveillance deprives people of freedom. People without freedom cannot be creative. Without the spirit of innovation, invention is impossible. That is why you have turned your country into the world champion of intellectual-property theft. China became wealthy not through its own inventions, but through the inventions of other countries. The reason is that you prohibited free thought. China’s greatest export, the flagship export that nobody wanted yet that spread around the world, is coronavirus.
③ You, your government, and your scholars had long known that coronavirus spreads from person to person, yet you did not inform the world. When Western scholars were asking what was happening in Wuhan, your aides did not answer the phone or reply to emails. You were such a proud nationalist that you felt the truth to be a national shame and did not make it public.
④ The Washington Post has reported that multiple laboratories in Wuhan were conducting coronavirus research using bats without observing safety standards. Why were poison laboratories not protected like prisons for political prisoners? Do you intend to explain that once to the wives, husbands, daughters, sons, and parents of coronavirus victims who are grieving all over the world?
⑤ In your country, everyone has begun whispering about you. Your power is shaking. You have created an inscrutable, opaque China. It is an inhuman surveillance state and a country that spread a deadly infectious disease. This is your political legacy.
Do educated people not pick it up?
And at the end, he writes as follows.
“Your country’s embassy says that I am betraying the ‘traditional friendship between our two peoples.’ I think that, for you, sending masks around the world with a generous attitude is a great ‘friendship.’ I do not call that friendship. I call it sneering imperialism. You are trying to use a plague that originated in China to make China stronger. I, however, do not think you can strengthen your own power by doing so. Coronavirus will sooner or later put an end to your political life. Sincerely, Julian Reichelt.”
It is quite powerful.
Bild readers must have been astonished, but perhaps the people most stunned were his fellow journalists.
At present, I know no one, apart from U.S. President Trump, who can defy China to this extent.
Ms. Kawaguchi, there is one here as well: Kukai and Nobunaga living in the present age.
Recently, German media have gradually begun to handle criticism of China, but in most cases they only skim the surface of environmental and human-rights issues.
In other words, from the perspective of Japanese people, all of these are things they have known for a very long time.
Even so, German citizens, who have been made to hear nothing but news praising China for so long, are still sufficiently surprised.
This time, however, Reichelt’s article is on a different level.
The target of attack is neither carbon dioxide nor PM2.5, nor poachers in Africa killing elephants for ivory.
It is Chinese President Xi Jinping, the core of China.
Who on earth is this fearless person?
Does he not have a family…?
No, before that, first there is Bild itself.
Bild is a tabloid mass newspaper and boasts the largest circulation in Germany.
It is said to be a newspaper that people with a certain level of education would never pick up.
Indeed, it contains everything from gossip about the entertainment world and sports world to erotic material, and it is a sensation-loving newspaper whose headlines often become as large as a fist.
There are many worthless articles, but perhaps when one piles up everything the masses want to read, this is the kind of newspaper that results.
Solid reporting ability
However, it must not be underestimated.
Precisely because Bild has such a large circulation, it is also a newspaper that politicians concerned about votes can never treat lightly.
Moreover, although its political section is a mixture of wheat and chaff, it is quite interesting.
Furthermore, since it is aimed at the masses, each article is short and, above all, easy to understand.
Compared with other newspapers called first-rate papers, its degree of political correctness seems somewhat looser, and it has the advantage of being able to say what it wants without hesitation.
Even things for which other newspapers would be attacked seem to be tolerated with, “Well, it’s Bild.”
That said, its reporting ability is not inferior.
At least its political reporters appear to be quite capable and to have their antennae firmly extended into the political world.
For example, former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, was struck by various scandals in his later years and almost stopped accepting the media.
Amid that, the newspaper that stayed close to Kohl from an early stage, remained by his side, and reported in detail on this great statesman until the very end was Bild.
Most of the heartwarming photos of Kohl in his later years were taken by Bild reporters.
Julian Reichelt has been editor-in-chief of Bild’s online edition since 2017, and from March of the following year, 2018, also served concurrently as editor-in-chief of the print edition.
Born in 1980, he was 39 years old, but since he has reportedly been involved in reporting from battlefields and conflict zones in Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon, Thailand, and elsewhere, he is probably an adventurous journalist.
Could it be that, while becoming bored in the editor-in-chief’s office at the Berlin headquarters, his welling reckless courage became directed single-mindedly at Xi Jinping?
This article will continue.