In July 2020, the United States closed the Chinese Consulate General in Houston, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library to declare a historic reversal of nearly fifty years of engagement with China.
Through an essay by Yoshiko Sakurai, this article examines America’s new principle of “distrust and verify” toward the Chinese Communist Party and the historic choice confronting Japan amid the deepening confrontation between the United States and China.

July 31, 2020
It was an incident that lent credibility to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s assertion that the consulate was a centre of Chinese espionage operations in the United States.
The following is taken from Yoshiko Sakurai’s regular column, entitled “A Greater Sense of Crisis: The Reverse Nixon Shock,” which, together with Masayuki Takayama’s column, concludes the current issue of Shukan Shincho, released today.
Yoshiko Sakurai is a “national treasure” in the sense defined by Saichō.
On July 24, the United States government closed the Chinese Consulate General in Houston, Texas.
On July 27, the Chinese government retaliated by closing the United States Consulate General in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.
At the Chinese Consulate General in Houston, secret documents and other materials were burned throughout the night, causing a fire and forcing firefighters to use water hoses.
It was an incident that lent credibility to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s assertion that the consulate was a centre of Chinese espionage operations in the United States.
As the United States and China deepen their confrontation by taking the extraordinary step of closing each other’s diplomatic missions, Japan, situated between the two countries, is unavoidably being brought to a crossroads that will determine its destiny.
The rapidly changing relationship between the United States and China is a matter of the utmost importance that will determine Japan’s fate.
Unless Japan responds correctly, it will be unable to protect either its national character or its national interests for generations to come.
Nevertheless, how strangely silent Japan’s media, political world and public opinion have remained.
Nearly half a century ago, at the time of the 1971 “Nixon Shock,” the whole of Japan was thrown into an uproar.
President Nixon severely criticised the preceding Johnson administration, which had been most deeply involved in the Vietnam War.
As part of the process of resolving the Vietnam problem, Nixon improved relations with China and used it as a strategic counterweight against the former Soviet Union, which the United States regarded as its greatest threat.
This is described in Tadae Takubo’s Nixon and Diplomacy toward China, published by Chikuma Shobo.
Japan was informed only three minutes before the public announcement that President Nixon would visit China, a country with which the United States had previously had no diplomatic relations, by the spring of 1972.
A torrent of news coverage followed.
As is widely known, Prime Minister Eisaku Satō eventually resigned, and Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and Foreign Minister Masayoshi Ōhira hurriedly visited China and established diplomatic relations.
I would not describe the superficial frenzy of reporting that engulfed Japan at the time as desirable.
Yet the strangely subdued reaction we are seeing today also fills me with unease.
I cannot help thinking that it is a sign that Japan is choosing the easiest course, one based on maintaining the status quo, but one that is certain to prove mistaken in the medium and long term.
As I pointed out in this column last week, the world is now in the midst of a conflict between fundamentally different values.
It is said that half a century ago, when Nixon invited China into the international community and opened the door to its participation, he remarked:
“Have we created a Frankenstein monster?”
“Do Not Trust” the Chinese Communist Party
Through the engagement policy that followed, the United States helped China for fifty of the more than seventy years of the People’s Republic of China’s history.
Secretary of State Pompeo is now saying that America did indeed create the Frankenstein monster that Nixon had feared.
Pompeo’s July 23 speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library represented a dramatic reversal of American policy toward China since the Nixon era.
Its central message can be condensed into the words, “Distrust and verify.”
President Reagan once said of negotiations with the Soviet Union, “Trust, but verify.”
The United States is now declaring that the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, must not be trusted.
Since Nixon, the United States has closed its eyes to the fact that China is a communist country.
It believed that, once China became prosperous, it would turn into an open democracy resembling the United States.
Pompeo stressed how profoundly mistaken the American view of communist China had been, particularly in underestimating the difference in ideology and morality.
“I spent part of the Cold War in the Army.
One thing I learned was that communists always lie.
The CCP’s greatest lie is its claim that it represents 1.4 billion people.
In reality, the people are monitored and oppressed, and they are afraid to speak freely.
The CCP, which is founded upon lies, fears the honest voices of its own people more than it fears any foreign enemy.”
The current United States administration is conducting diplomacy by clearly distinguishing between the CCP and the Chinese people.
Pompeo praised the Chinese people as “dynamic, freedom-loving people who are entirely different from the CCP.”
Based on the understanding that hard-line measures alone cannot achieve the results America seeks, the United States says that it wants to cooperate with freedom-loving Chinese citizens and empower them.
During the question-and-answer session following the speech, Hugh Hewitt, described as director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and a leading authority on Nixon, raised a question.
Separating the Chinese people from the CCP, he suggested, made it appear as though there were two Chinas.
Would diplomacy be unable to function within such a structure?
Was the objective perhaps to cause diplomacy itself to fail?
The question startled me.
It sounded as though he were asking whether the United States intended to support the Chinese people in overthrowing the CCP.
Pompeo replied that, since the CCP is China’s only ruling party, the United States must negotiate with it, but that America could not at the same time ignore the voices of the Chinese people.
I can only conclude that the United States has the destruction of the Chinese Communist Party and regime change within its field of vision.
Does It Serve Japan’s National Interests?
For the first time since Nixon, the United States has begun to take seriously the threat posed by China’s communist ideology.
It has recognised that the People’s Liberation Army does not exist to protect the Chinese people but to protect the CCP, and that all organisations and corporations in China are merely institutions that work for the Party.
Chinese state-owned companies act in accordance with CCP strategy, regardless of profit.
They can therefore compete advantageously against Western companies, including American companies, which operate under the principles of free competition.
Chinese students and researchers also become advance agents of the CCP and continue stealing American intellectual property and research achievements.
Recognising that such conduct is widespread, the United States is now asking why it permitted China’s wrongdoing to continue for so many years.
Pompeo cited several causes.
The West was ignorant of the deep hostility toward Western systems inherent in the communist ideology that China continues to carry with it.
It became complacent after its Cold War victory.
Capitalism became consumed by greed.
The West was also deceived by China’s skilfully constructed narrative of a “peaceful rise.”
Ignorance, complacency, greed and deception all apply equally to Japan, and especially to the Japanese business community.
Pompeo also asked:
“Is our spirit willing, but our flesh weak?”
The struggle against the CCP will not be easy.
Even if it means turning away from immediate economic利益, we must follow the correct path based on fundamental values.
That is precisely the course that business leaders and many others most strongly dislike.
Japan must now consider its national interests from a medium- and long-term perspective.
To change a Marxist-Leninist China, we must judge it not by its words but by its actions, and respond according to the principle of “action for action.”
The attitude described earlier—“Distrust and verify”—is precisely the attitude Japan must adopt.
We are being forced to make a momentous choice in the face of one of the great crises of this century.
Whether the choice involves the United States or China, the guiding standard must be whether it serves Japan’s national interests.
Look at the Senkaku Islands issue.
Look at the historical disputes.
Unless the entire Japanese population recognises the problem, Japan’s next generation, and the generation after that, will live in an age in which everything is controlled by China.
The Japanese people must recognise this crisis and engrave upon their hearts the history of how Japan avoided domination by the Chinese world and followed its own honourable path.