This article republishes a chapter first issued on January 9, 2020, quoting Masayuki Takayama’s essay on China’s 2013 declaration of an air defense identification zone over the Senkaku Islands, then–U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Beijing accompanied by Hunter Biden, and the subsequent controversies involving Ukraine and Burisma. It also examines the author’s criticism of U.S. Democratic administrations and Japanese media coverage.

August 19, 2020
I am republishing the chapter I originally posted on January 9, 2020, under the title, “The compensation was 100 million yen a year. It followed the same pattern as with the Senkaku issue. When things are this blatant, even Ukrainian prosecutors move to investigate.”
The reason should require no explanation.
It is to make clear to the public the folly of Japanese television media, beginning with NHK, which are plainly anti-Trump.
The following is taken from an essay by Masayuki Takayama entitled “The Democratic Party on the Edge of a Precipice,” published at the end of the issue of Shukan Shincho released yesterday.
The world will once again recognize and marvel at the fact that he is a journalist without equal in the postwar world.
In November 2013, shortly after Xi Jinping became president, the Chinese Communist regime established an Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ, covering the airspace over the Senkaku Islands.
It effectively meant, “This is our sky, and if outsiders enter, we will shoot them down,” and Chinese fighter aircraft began patrolling the area.
The Senkaku Islands are Japanese territory. The Abe administration protested that China had no right to make such a claim.
Xi Jinping merely scoffed.
But this was not an issue that could be settled through an exchange of words.
The ADIZ also overlapped with the Flight Information Region, or FIR, used by civilian aircraft.
Aircraft flying through it were required to inform the country that established the ADIZ of their nationality and destination.
The airspace over the Senkaku Islands had long been Japanese airspace and part of Japan’s FIR.
Yet if airlines refused to notify China in order to uphold the Japanese government’s position, there was the possibility that they might be shot down.
In fact, Xi Jinping had also issued what was described as a “defensive emergency measure” authorizing action against aircraft that failed to provide notification.
Civilian airlines from various countries, including Japan Airlines, therefore had little choice but to comply with China’s demand.
But such high-handed behavior could not simply be accepted.
Vice President Biden of the Obama administration flew to Beijing and held talks with Xi Jinping.
For some reason, his son Hunter, who was involved in an investment company, accompanied him.
Yet the outcome was essentially what Xi Jinping had demanded.
Civilian aircraft were to notify China before flying through the zone.
From Japan’s point of view, it was almost as though the United States had told it that the Senkaku Islands were already Chinese territory.
Like the Clinton administration before it, the Obama administration treated Japan as nothing and placed priority on China.
Why did the U.S. Democratic Party give China such preferential treatment?
Soju Watanabe describes what he sees as the mechanism behind this in detail in The Collapse of the American Democratic Party.
According to the book, ten days after Biden met Xi Jinping, a Chinese state-owned bank committed $1.5 billion to an investment company associated with his son Hunter.
Biden, the essay argues, accepted China’s position in return for money.
In other words, it portrays him as profiting from diplomacy.
American foreign policy was traditionally associated with the Monroe Doctrine, or a principle of avoiding intervention abroad.
The Democratic Party, however, frequently disregarded it.
It entered the First World War and also intervened in matters surrounding the establishment of Manchukuo.
The result, according to this argument, was that it gained leverage in both Europe and China and turned diplomacy into financial benefit.
Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash portrays Democratic administrations since the Clinton era as using foreign policy for financial gain.
The essay argues that Biden followed the same course.
The Ukraine issue that arose at roughly the same period as the Senkaku dispute is presented in the same way.
Obama was promoting NATO’s eastward expansion in order to contain Russia.
Eastern European countries were brought in one after another, until the effort eventually reached Ukraine, directly on Russia’s doorstep.
Ukraine was notorious for corruption.
In exchange for moving toward the West, it sought substantial military assistance and other forms of support.
On this occasion as well, Biden traveled to Kyiv, and the essay states that Hunter accompanied him, while military assistance was promised.
Not long afterward, Hunter joined the board of the major Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma.
His compensation was said to be 100 million yen a year.
The essay presents this as following the same pattern as the Senkaku episode.
With matters appearing so blatant, it says, Ukrainian prosecutors began investigating.
Reuters then reported, according to the article, that Biden had threatened to withhold assistance and had the prosecutor general dismissed.
The essay argues that major American media outlets supportive of the Democratic Party did not condemn what it regarded as a major scandal.
At the time, the Democratic Party’s impeachment proceedings against Trump had begun.
Trump had told Ukraine’s new president that he wanted action taken against widespread corruption.
The Democratic Party interpreted this as meaning that Trump must have wanted Biden’s alleged corruption investigated.
If foreign policy had been used for private political purposes, they argued, it would constitute grounds for impeachment.
The essay charges that they defended Biden while manufacturing a different suspicion against Trump.
It further argues that American media ignored this contradiction, while the Asahi Shimbun, described as doing little more than translating the New York Times, prominently called for Trump’s impeachment.
It compares this to the Asahi Shimbun’s handling of the Moritomo and Kake controversies in Japan.
Soju Watanabe predicted that Trump would win reelection in a landslide and that the U.S. Democratic Party would collapse just as Japan’s Democratic Party had.
“His prediction will come true,” the original article concluded.