This article presents a dialogue between University of Tsukuba Professor Emeritus Hiroshi Furuta and international political scholar Genki Fujii concerning the argument that changes in China’s foreign policy are driven by domestic and intra-Party power struggles, as well as their discussion of political legitimacy, historical concepts of hygiene, proximity between humans and animals, and the emergence of new viruses.
The dialogue develops these themes through the contrast it draws between an “ancient worldview” and modern rationality.

July 22, 2020
This article was originally published on July 22, 2020, and continues the dialogue between Hiroshi Furuta and Genki Fujii from the preceding chapter.
The first part argues that shifts in Chinese foreign policy should be understood not merely as rational state strategy but as extensions of domestic and Chinese Communist Party power struggles.
The latter part moves to questions of hygiene, human proximity to animals, new viruses, and a passage by scholar Kunio Miura, culminating in Furuta’s characterization of what he calls “active uncleanliness.”
The following translation faithfully reflects the arguments and expressions of the original July 22, 2020 text.
【English Translation】
July 22, 2020
Looking at past changes in China’s foreign policy, they have not been determined by whether something was rational, but have been driven by internal conflict… carried out as an extension of domestic and intra-Party power struggles.
The following continues from the previous chapter.
“Active Uncleanliness” and Viruses
Fujii: Looking at past changes in China’s foreign policy, they have not been determined by whether something was rational, but have been driven by internal conflict.
In other words, changes in China’s foreign policy are carried out as an extension of domestic and intra-Party power struggles.
Furuta: Factions are everything.
They have not escaped from an ancient worldview.
Fujii: Even if you look at the past seventy years of Chinese history, there has never been an era without intra-Party struggle.
Fierce power struggles have always existed.
The reason is that in China, “power” itself possesses no legitimacy.
The only question for someone seeking to stand at the top is whether he has military power, or in peacetime, whether he has money.
Mao Zedong aptly said that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” showing that he understood the dynamics of Chinese politics very well.
Even a bandit can become emperor if he gains sufficient power and succeeds in unifying the country.
It is a world in which power is everything.
Furuta: Concepts such as law and order have never existed.
You can see this clearly even in the Great Ming Code, the laws enacted during the Ming dynasty.
There are provisions such as, “Do not throw filth into another person’s face.
Doing so will result in one hundred blows,” and it is full of such ridiculous things. [Laughs.]
When people want to insult someone, they defecate and throw it at them.
There was an incident in which a female Japan Coast Guard crew member had feces thrown at her by a crew member of a Chinese smuggling vessel (“Sankei-sho,” Sankei Shimbun, November 11, 2010; my book A ‘Unified Korea’ Will Be a Disaster for Japan, Asuka Shinsha, 2018, p. 111).
Fujii: In South Korea as well, during strikes, union members sometimes scatter feces in front of management.
Furuta: They have been influenced by China.
It is the relationship of “Greater China” to “Lesser China.”
South Korea is also, in any case, unclean.
The female travel writer Isabella Bird went so far as to write that “the dirtiest city in the world is Shaoxing, China.
The second is Seoul, Korea.”
They do not even change their underwear until it becomes unpleasant.
Perhaps because of their food, many also have smelly feet, and Korean even has a special word, “korinnae,” for the smell of feet.
Even in military barracks, those whose feet smell are made to sleep with their feet sticking outside the door.
According to Kaori Fukushima, China extracted 2,000 types of viruses over the preceding twelve years.
The figure for the world as a whole is around 280.
The difference is enormous.
Furthermore, people in southern China eat animals such as pangolins, golden snub-nosed monkeys, and horseshoe bats.
That is how viruses spread.
Fujii: Viruses themselves are said to have begun moving from animals to humans after human beings started raising livestock.
When humans and animals live in close proximity, new viruses continue to emerge.
Particularly dangerous regions are sub-Saharan Africa and southern China.
Pigs, chickens, wild birds, carp in ponds, and other animals coexist in the same environment.
Viruses are present there, and people eat those animals.
That is how new viruses spread.
Furuta: There is also information that a new swine influenza virus has been found in China.
I apologize for quoting him in this context, but Professor Kunio Miura, a scholar of Chinese thought, said, “When considering Chinese culture from a broad perspective, I believe we cannot exclude the viewpoint of starting from the fundamental desires of human beings, or of living organisms themselves” (The Desire for Immortality: Chinese Dreams and Practices, Jinbun Shoin, 2000, p. 11).
In other words, these are people among whom “human animality” has appeared directly in the form of coexistence with animals.
Of course, the animality of human beings is different from the animality of animals.
Therefore, rather than the natural uncleanliness of Aboriginal people who do not bathe, in the case of Chinese people it might be called “active uncleanliness.”
Among the Chinese, there is an open acceptance of human animality.
Putting split-crotch pants on children and allowing them to defecate at Disneyland is an example of that.
Because modern rationality is not instilled in them either, children become trapped in holes and pipes here and there like small animals.
Fujii: New viruses keep emerging.
Even the Spanish flu, which killed more than fifty million people worldwide, has been said to possibly have originated in China.
Furuta: It is as though the ancient world is eating away at the modern world.
Fujii: Moreover, viruses do not choose people or places, so infections are also spreading throughout China.
But as Mao Zedong’s guerrilla strategy illustrates, according to Chinese values, human life costs nothing.
It does not matter how many people die.
“Unrestricted Warfare,” too, can only be carried out by people who feel no pangs of conscience no matter how many lies they tell.
It would be impossible if there were standards of good and evil.
For China, only victory is demanded.
Furuta: It is the animality of the human animal.
To be continued.