This essay criticizes NHK News Watch 9 for placing the United States and China on the same level as “two great powers,” and examines Japan’s economic, academic, national, and military strength, the COVID-19 crisis and the WHO, Donald Trump’s view of China, nuclear deterrence, and Japan’s security in relation to China and North Korea.

August 20, 2020
Originally published on April 16, 2020 under the title, “Anyone with discernment can understand how malicious it is to place the United States and China on the same level over the Wuhan virus issue.” This chapter is now being republished on August 20, 2020 after correcting its paragraphing and related matters.
NHK’s News Watch 9 has long appeared to believe that it is proper to comment on the United States and China by placing them on the same level.
This was when Arima was presenting the program with Kuwako, but without the slightest hesitation he calmly remarked, “Japan stands between the two great powers, the United States and China.”
At that moment, too, I became convinced that this man was thoroughly committed to self-denigration and to diminishing Japan.
Anyone who truly understands Japan’s real strength—its economic power, academic strength, national power, and military capability—could never make such a statement.
His habitual tendency to denigrate and diminish Japan in every possible situation, while baselessly placing himself and his colleagues in an omnipotent position, is the mentality of a union activist.
Last night, as I described earlier, in response to the United States’ entirely reasonable decision regarding the WHO, Arima went so far as repeatedly to speak of the United States and China as though they stood on the same level.
Anyone with discernment can understand how malicious it is to place the United States and China on the same footing in relation to the Wuhan virus.
In this matter, putting the United States and China on the same level amounts to siding with China—indeed, it is almost equivalent to declaring oneself, like Tedros of the WHO, an agent of China.
Furthermore, if I were an American, his remarks would make me furious.
Arima added commentary suggesting that the Trump administration’s criticism of and decision concerning the WHO were intended to conceal its failure to contain the virus.
Trump does not lie.
Trump said at a press conference:
“The American people are not a people who live regimented lives. In other words, ours is a multiethnic nation, an aggregation of enormously diverse people, each living as they choose.”
He concealed nothing.
He simply spoke straightforwardly.
When he was elected president, a senior Chinese government official said in earnest:
“Almost everyone enters politics in order to make a fortune, or becomes wealthy through politics. The typical examples are members of the Chinese Communist Party—China’s politicians. The fortunes they accumulate are astronomical. Trump, on the other hand, had already become one of America’s richest men before entering politics. That is the difference. That is what is admirable about him.”
Trump is enormously wealthy.
He has no need to look anxiously to either side for anyone’s approval.
He looks at things directly and judges them directly.
That is why, seeing that Japan—which in substantive terms remains the world’s second great power, a superpower—is being threatened with nuclear weapons by the Communist dictatorships of China and North Korea, he spoke straightforwardly:
“Why doesn’t Japan have nuclear weapons too?”
That would also reduce America’s military burden.
It was a characteristically Trump-like remark.
He had no thought in mind of the Constitution imposed by GHQ to keep Japan permanently weakened, nor of the occasions when several successive Japanese prime ministers said that Japan might also need nuclear weapons, only to have those ideas opposed and crushed every time.
As businessmen understand, businessmen always look at the present.
For a businessman, the past is useless.
If someone was once enormously wealthy but no longer is, there is no point trying to sell that person an apartment in Trump Tower that only someone with very substantial assets can afford.
If two villains are trying to kill you, why would you not carry a handgun?
Moreover, those two villains are impervious to any sermon.
They are made of bottomless evil and plausible lies.
Why would you not possess nuclear weapons?
That, in other words, is what Trump was saying.
He has absolutely no need to ingratiate himself with or flatter an emperor with no clothes.
Yet emperors with no clothes such as Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un exist before our very eyes, in our own time.
They will not disappear today or tomorrow.
Since that is the reality, Trump, as a businessman, conducted transactions for the sake of America.
One example was making China purchase large quantities of wheat from American farmers.
But those transactions were entirely unlike Biden’s, which were aimed at enriching his own son—his own family—and thus enriching himself.
Unlike Biden, Trump is a man who achieved enormous success in the business world and became immensely wealthy.
America is great, and it must be great.
That, surely, is Trump’s creed.
Is that not written on the faces of the two men?
There can be little doubt that China wants Biden to become president.
Among those in Japan who call themselves commentators, anyone who appears to hope for Biden’s victory should, to put it in the strongest terms, more accurately be suspected of being an agent of China.
In other words, if Japan is to confront China and North Korea, should it not possess nuclear weapons?
Otherwise, would not Japan itself be the emperor with no clothes?
Why does Japan not possess nuclear weapons?
That is the true meaning of Trump’s statement.
As I stated earlier, it was during Arima’s final summary on last night’s News Watch 9 that I became convinced that he was an agent of China.