A critique of NHK News Watch 9’s treatment of the United States, China, and the WHO during the COVID-19 crisis, centered on an observation attributed by the author to a senior Chinese government official: Trump was already one of America’s wealthiest men when he entered politics, and “that is the difference.”

August 19, 2020
This is a republication of the chapter originally issued on April 16, 2020 under the title, “Anyone with discernment can understand just how malicious it is to place the United States and China on the same level over the Wuhan virus issue.”
NHK’s News Watch 9 has long seemed to believe that it is correct to comment on the United States and China as though the two should be placed on the same level.
When Arima was co-hosting the program with Kuwako, he once said without the slightest hesitation that Japan stood between the two great powers, the United States and China.
At that moment, I once again became convinced that this man was thoroughly given to belittling and diminishing Japan.
No one who truly understood Japan’s actual strength, economic power, academic capabilities, national power, and military capabilities could have made such a statement.
His habitual tendency to belittle and diminish Japan in every conceivable situation while placing himself and his colleagues, without any basis, in an omnipotent position is characteristic of a labor-union activist’s mentality.
As stated above, last night, in response to the United States’ entirely natural decision concerning the WHO, Arima repeatedly went so far as to place the United States and China on the same level.
Anyone with discernment can understand just how malicious it is to treat the United States and China as equivalent in the matter of the Wuhan virus.
In this matter, placing the United States and China on the same level amounts to siding with China—indeed, it is virtually equivalent to declaring oneself an agent of China, just like Tedros of the WHO.
Furthermore, if I were an American, his remarks would make me furious.
Arima commented on America’s criticism of and decision concerning the WHO as though the Trump administration were doing so in order to conceal its failure to contain the virus.
Trump does not lie.
Trump said at a press conference:
“Americans are not a people who live regimented lives. In other words, the United States is a multiethnic nation made up of many different kinds of people, each living as they choose.”
He was concealing nothing.
He was simply speaking directly.
When Trump was elected president, a senior Chinese government official made a sincere observation.
Almost everyone becomes a politician and then acquires wealth, or becomes a politician in order to acquire wealth.
The typical examples are the members of the Chinese Communist Party committees—the politicians of China.
The fortunes they accumulate are astronomical.
Trump, on the other hand, had already become one of the wealthiest men in the United States before entering politics.
That is the difference.
That is what is admirable.
Trump is an immensely wealthy man.
He has no need to look anxiously to others for approval.
He looks at things directly and makes judgments directly.
That is why, seeing that Japan—which in real terms remains the world’s second great power, a superpower—is under nuclear threat from the Communist dictatorships of China and North Korea, he spoke directly.
“Why shouldn’t Japan have nuclear weapons? Then the military burden on the United States could also be reduced.”
It was quintessentially Trump.
He was not thinking about the Constitution imposed by GHQ in order permanently to weaken Japan, nor about the fact that whenever some past Japanese prime ministers suggested that Japan might need nuclear weapons, such ideas were opposed and crushed.
As businessmen understand, a businessman always looks at the present.
For a businessman, the past is of no use.
Trying to sell an apartment in Trump Tower, which only people of substantial wealth can afford, to someone who merely used to be rich would be completely meaningless.
If two villains are trying to kill you, why would you not carry a gun?
Especially when those two villains cannot be persuaded by any amount of preaching.
They are made up of bottomless evil and plausible lies.
Why would you not possess nuclear weapons?
That, in essence, was what Trump was saying.
He has absolutely no need to ingratiate himself with or flatter a naked emperor.
If that emperor exists and is not going to disappear today or tomorrow, Trump simply does business with him.
In other words, if Japan is to confront China and North Korea without possessing nuclear weapons, would not Japan itself be the naked emperor?
Why does Japan not possess nuclear weapons?
That is the true meaning I see in his remarks.
As stated earlier, it was Arima’s concluding remarks at the end of last night’s News Watch 9 that convinced me that he was acting as an agent of China.