Through a dialogue between journalist Masayuki Takayama and former Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective and interpreter-investigator Tadanobu Bando, this article examines China’s one-party system, arguments over democratization after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Hong Kong National Security Law, Chinese activities in the South and East China Seas, and Japan’s identity-verification and crime-prevention systems.

2020-07-06
When Bando was invited to speak, he stood up and calmly declared, “Even if democratic forces were to overthrow the Communist Party regime, the people at the centre of the next government would still be Chinese.”
The current issue of the monthly magazine WiLL contains a special dialogue titled “Know the True Nature of the Chinese,” featuring Masayuki Takayama, whom I regard as a unique journalist in the post-war world, and Tadanobu Bando, a former Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective and interpreter-investigator.
It is essential reading not only for the Japanese people but also for people throughout the world.
Unless a country understands the principles that govern the conduct of the other side, it cannot determine its next move through theoretical diplomatic negotiations alone.
It is overly simplistic to assume that society and human conduct will change immediately when a political system changes.
A long period of one-party rule, historical education, social institutions, the operation of law, and a way of life centred on family and personal connections all exert a profound influence on people’s judgments and conduct.
The issue raised by this dialogue is not limited to criticism of the Chinese Communist Party government.
It argues that even if the government were replaced, Japan could not formulate an accurate China policy without understanding the patterns of conduct formed over many years within Chinese society.
The following is quoted from the dialogue.
The statements and judgments expressed belong to the respective speakers.
【Chinese People Remain Chinese】
Takayama
Mr. Bando is truly a man of extraordinary talents!
He is an armour craftsman, a former Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective, and at the same time one of the leading specialists in the study of Chinese people.
Bando
Armour-making is almost entirely a hobby, so I am embarrassed by such praise. [Laughs]
Takayama
I became fully aware of Mr. Bando’s remarkable insight six years ago at a gathering in Ichigaya commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
People with connections to China stood one after another and recalled the events.
Some wept uncontrollably as they remembered comrades who had been crushed beneath tanks and killed.
The general atmosphere was that the Tiananmen crackdown had caused Chinese democratization to suffer a major setback.
Mr. Bando was then invited to speak.
He stood up and calmly declared, “Even if democratic forces were to overthrow the Communist Party regime, the people at the centre of the next government would still be Chinese.” [Laughs]
Bando
Everyone around me burst into laughter.
I wondered why the remark had been received so enthusiastically. [Laughs]
Afterward, someone from the Federation for a Democratic China, a Chinese democracy movement organization, who had been in the audience contacted me.
He said, “You put it very directly, and now I understand it clearly myself.”
There were also Falun Gong practitioners present.
It left a strong impression on me that they agreed, saying, “Nothing will improve unless Chinese people themselves change from the heart.”
Takayama
Most of the dynasties in Chinese history were founded by peoples who were not ethnically Han.
When dynasties ruled by Han Chinese, such as the Han or Ming, held power, the country fell into disorder, culture declined, the people became exhausted, and government was at its worst.
The present Xi Jinping administration is, in my view, the worst kind of Han Chinese government.
Because it has acquired power out of proportion to its character, the damage it causes is no longer confined within China.
It now extends from neighbouring Xinjiang and Tibet to countries far across the southern seas and even to Europe.
What the Japanese people now require may be what we might call Bando’s view of Chinese history.
Whatever happens politically, Chinese people remain Chinese.
Japan must therefore understand correctly the principles that govern their conduct.
Bando
We must recognize that the root of China’s current problems lies in the harmful effects of the one-party dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party.
Takayama
In the past, dynastic revolutions merely replaced one emperor with another.
Today, an emperor called the Chinese Communist Party rules the country.
In that sense, China has not changed.
The Wuhan virus crisis has inflicted an enormous wound upon the world.
The United States has recorded more deaths than the combined number of American military fatalities in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
Its economy has stagnated, and economic losses were expected to exceed those caused by the global financial crisis.
It is therefore natural that responsibility should be demanded from China in some form.
Even the Democratic Party in the United States, which had approached China closely over the previous half-century, abruptly changed its attitude.
Legislation directed at Chinese companies such as Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu, restricting access to listing on American stock exchanges unless they met required standards, was approved without opposition.
Europe was also furious.
【In Effect, a Declaration of War】
Bando
Following China’s imposition of the National Security Law on Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States issued a statement condemning China.
There can be no doubt that attitudes toward China have changed significantly.
Takayama
It was, in effect, almost a declaration of war against China.
China, however, has responded by becoming even more defiant.
It has incorporated artificial islands created through land reclamation in the Spratly and Paracel Islands into what it claims as national territory and has attempted to turn the surrounding waters into territorial seas.
It repeatedly violates waters around the Taiwan Strait.
In the East China Sea, China Coast Guard vessels openly enter the waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands.
They even pursued a Japanese fishing vessel for three consecutive days.
In response to Japan’s restrained protest, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian brazenly stated, “The vessel entered Chinese territorial waters, so it was merely driven away.”
That was a false statement.
China is, in effect, initiating a conflict with Japan.
Japan should at least have considered recalling its ambassador, yet it made virtually no response.
This was also surely an occasion on which Renhō should have been required to say something.
At precisely that time, Kyodo News reported in connection with the four-country statement that the Japanese government had also been invited to participate but had refused.
Takayama regarded this as a deliberately misleading report.
The Sankei Shimbun then published the Kyodo dispatch.
During the dialogue, Takayama suggested that Chinese influence might have been behind the report.
Leaving that aside, Japan’s opposition parties have also failed to make the Hong Kong issue a major subject of parliamentary debate.
The government appears capable of pursuing nothing other than an indecisive foreign policy and seems to remain with its head bowed.
This is precisely the time when Japan should make its position completely clear.
Yet the newspapers and media, which ought to play a central role, are even more foolish than the opposition parties.
They say little beyond “Oppose war,” “Promote Japan-China friendship,” and “Resolve matters through dialogue.”
How does China use the language of friendship?
What principles actually govern its conduct?
The media must report these matters far more clearly.
The American missionary Arthur H. Smith wrote Chinese Characteristics.
Lin Yutang, himself Chinese, also wrote candidly about Chinese people and Chinese culture.
Surely the mission of the media today is to communicate such observations.
Bando
In the past, I questioned approximately 1,400 Chinese nationals.
About one-third of them were suspected or convicted offenders.
I am sometimes criticized on the grounds that my assessment of Chinese people must be biased because I dealt mainly with criminals.
That criticism is not accurate.
Chinese people frequently use personal connections to find employment and housing.
As a result, the witnesses and associates connected to Chinese suspects were also usually Chinese.
Undocumented migrants were sometimes included among them.
In many cases, they lived ordinary lives while showing no outward sign that they had entered the country illegally.
【Cunning and Lacking in Courtesy】
Takayama
The Asahi Shimbun has written editorials opposing the linking of Japan’s My Number identification system with bank accounts.
It also opposed earlier systems such as the proposed green card system and the Basic Resident Register Network.
It repeatedly argued, “Should citizens be called by numbers?” and condemned what it described as a universal numbering system.
If the My Number system were implemented thoroughly, tax evasion would certainly become more difficult.
Fraudulent bank accounts would be harder to open, and purchasing property under a false identity would also become more difficult.
Ordinary Japanese citizens, however, would experience little disadvantage.
Those who would face difficulty would be people who entered the country illegally and foreign offenders using underground banking systems.
Takayama stated that Chinese nationals, people from the Korean Peninsula, and Vietnamese nationals were heavily represented among such cases.
In Japan, it has been possible for some Chinese nationals who entered the country illegally to purchase homes, open Chinese restaurants, and send their children to school.
Some time earlier, the child of a Chinese couple who had entered Japan illegally was kidnapped on the way home from school in Adachi Ward.
A ransom of fifteen million yen was demanded.
The six members of the group arrested for the crime were also Chinese nationals.
They reportedly said that they had committed the crime because they believed the parents, being undocumented migrants, would be unable to contact the police.
In other words, a person who had entered Japan illegally could still live in central Tokyo, open a business, send a child to a Japanese school, and accumulate savings of fifteen million yen.
Takayama criticized the Asahi Shimbun’s opposition to the My Number system on the grounds that it could ultimately benefit foreign offenders who threatened public safety in Japan.
His argument was that reporting framed exclusively in the language of human rights had made it more difficult to see the reality of crimes committed by some foreign nationals, including Chinese offenders.
Bando
The former alien registration certificate has now been replaced by the residence card.
It contains identity-verification features comparable in purpose to those of the My Number system.
At the time, however, many people who entered Japan clandestinely came from Fujian Province.
Naturally, the passports and alien registration certificates they possessed were often forged.
When I was an active officer, such documents were not particularly sophisticated.
Their quality gradually improved.
From around ten years ago, forged cards containing holograms began to appear, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish genuine documents from counterfeits.
Moreover, counterfeit documents produced by Chinese forgers contained relatively few errors in Chinese characters.
As a result, not only Chinese nationals but also people from Uzbekistan and Iran began seeking them.
Takayama
Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou presumably possessed highly sophisticated documents as well.
When she was arrested in Canada, it was reported that she possessed seven passports. [Laughs]
To be continued.