On August 3, 2020, former Elpida Memory president Yukio Sakamoto appeared on Nikkei Plus 10 as a senior vice president of China’s Tsinghua Unigroup.
This article questions the position of the program and the Nikkei in light of Elpida’s collapse, the public funds invested in the company, the burden imposed on Japanese taxpayers, and concerns surrounding the transfer of Japanese semiconductor expertise to China.

On August 3, 2020, as the confrontation between the United States and China expanded into trade, semiconductors, social media, and information warfare, I watched NHK BS1’s International News Report and BS TV Tokyo’s Nikkei Plus 10 simultaneously from 10:00 p.m.
While I was questioning NHK’s coverage and the developments surrounding TikTok, Yukio Sakamoto, the former president of Elpida Memory, appeared on Nikkei Plus 10 under the title of “Senior Vice President of China’s Tsinghua Unigroup.”
This article is a record of the questions I raised at the time about what his appearance revealed concerning Japanese semiconductor technology and the position of the Japanese media.
【Main Text】
For the first time in quite a while, I watched NHK BS1’s International News Report and BS TV Tokyo’s Nikkei Plus 10 simultaneously from 10:00 p.m.
As usual, NHK appeared preoccupied with its opposition to President Trump.
In connection with the move to ban TikTok, it reported that the platform had been used to spread campaigns related to racial unrest in the United States and to encourage people to register for President Trump’s election rally without actually attending it.
My suspicion that China was operating behind these movements had therefore proved entirely correct.
The program also introduced a Democratic Party figure who had established and was operating a website on which white voters who had supported President Trump in the previous election explained why they were turning against him.
To me, the man had the facial expression characteristic of someone operating under Chinese influence.
To put it simply, he had the look of a betrayer.
What surprised me even more was that Yukio Sakamoto appeared as the principal guest on Nikkei Plus 10.
His title was “Senior Vice President of China’s Tsinghua Unigroup.”
To me, he had the very appearance of a betrayer, and his brazen shamelessness was that of an iron-faced lackey befitting the Chinese Communist Party.
What remains unclear, however, is the position of Nikkei Plus 10 and the Nikkei itself.
Did they invite him because they knew the facts presented below and intended to inform the Japanese public about a man whom I regard as an extraordinary traitor to his country?
Or, on the contrary, were the program and the newspaper themselves completely under Chinese influence?
The following passage is taken from an article I published on June 27, 2020, under the title: “China’s semiconductor giant Tsinghua Unigroup appointed Yukio Sakamoto as a senior vice president in November 2019, but this man is nothing less than a traitor.”
【Quotation from the Article Published on June 27, 2020】
This morning, a friend of mine who is one of the most avid readers I know telephoned me and said, “You must read the following page in today’s Nikkei.”
He had already read the article I published on June 17, 2020, under the title: “Business leaders who still ingratiate themselves with China—Japan is seeing an increasing number of fraudsters who look Japanese but behave as though they were Chinese.”
The preceding section is omitted.
In November 2019, China’s semiconductor giant Tsinghua Unigroup decided to appoint Yukio Sakamoto as a senior vice president.
This man is nothing less than a “traitor.”
He was formerly the president of Elpida Memory, a major Japanese semiconductor manufacturer that had ranked third in the world in DRAM production.
After effectively selling the company off cheaply to the American company Micron, he now appears intent on handing its technology over to China.
In 2009, Elpida became the first company to receive assistance under the revised Act on Special Measures for Industrial Revitalization and received 30 billion yen in public funds.
Nevertheless, the company collapsed.
There have been suspicions that this may have been a deliberately planned bankruptcy.
Moreover, as a result of the collapse, Japanese taxpayers were left exposed to a maximum burden of 27.7 billion yen.
Miyazaki:
Japan is also seeing an increasing number of fraudsters who look Japanese but behave as though they were Chinese.
To be continued.
【Insertion Point for the Nikkei Article】
Insert the text or image of the relevant article from the August 3, 2020 edition of the Nikkei here.
【Conclusion】
The question is whether the Nikkei published the article because of its pro-China position.
It is extremely difficult to believe that the journalist who wrote it had read Masahiro Miyazaki and Tetsuya Watanabe’s The Great Coronavirus Depression: The World Excludes China, published on May 1, 2020, and wrote the article in order to inform the Japanese public about Yukio Sakamoto’s conduct.
That is precisely why the intention behind presenting Sakamoto as the principal guest on Nikkei Plus 10, and the position of the Nikkei itself, must be questioned.
The former president of a semiconductor company supported by Japanese public funds had become a senior vice president of a Chinese semiconductor corporation closely connected to China’s national industrial strategy.
How did one of Japan’s leading economic news organizations choose to present that fact?
This was not simply a matter of one corporate executive changing jobs.
It was a matter involving Japan’s semiconductor technology, its economic security, and the responsibility of its news organizations.