September 3, 2020. This article examines delays to Japan’s Linear Chuo Shinkansen project, China’s reported recruitment of approximately thirty Japanese engineers from a JR Central linear-motor-train team, and the potential diversion of superconducting and electromagnetic technologies to railguns and aircraft-carrier catapults, raising critical questions about technology outflows, economic security, and Japan’s national interest.

September 3, 2020
The following is taken from an essay by Hiroshi Yuasa entitled “Xi Jinping, the Wounded Dragon Incapable of Restraint,” published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Hanada.
As readers know, I have felt anger toward Kawakatsu, the governor of Shizuoka Prefecture, regarding him as a contemptible man, a scoundrel virtually equivalent to a traitor to his country.
The events that have occurred since construction finally began on the Linear Chuo Shinkansen—one of the crystallizations of Japan’s world-leading technology—are now at last becoming visible as a connected line.
They were phenomena resulting from the covert activity of forces seeking to delay construction.
They demonstrate the extent to which Chinese influence operations have been conducted within Japanese society.
First, for some reason, prosecutors moved to investigate and indict major general contractors.
As previously recorded, this column raised questions about that action.
Who prompted the prosecutors to act?
Next, as is widely known, Kawakatsu—the governor of Shizuoka Prefecture and a notorious pro-China figure who is said to regard Quotations from Chairman Mao as one of his favourite books—invoked environmental concerns, the ultimate form of the sham moralism exploited by countries conducting influence operations.
Although there may be a danger of flooding, the water could never simply dry up.
Nevertheless, he raised the objection that the headwaters of the Tenryu River would dry up, interfered with the project, and ultimately delayed completion of the Linear Chuo Shinkansen, which had been decided upon after so many years.
Last night, while reading the essay introduced above, I learned that what I had written as my inference about the truth behind these events was entirely factual.
【Quotation】
The preceding section is omitted.
Recruiting Away the Linear-Motor-Shinkansen Team
FBI Director Wray has also pointed out that China seeks to bypass the accumulated effort required for technological innovation by “stealing intellectual property from American companies and then competing against the very companies it victimized.”
China uses its “Thousand Talents Plan,” which attracts outstanding people from overseas with favourable treatment, to entice scientists and induce them to take American knowledge and technology back to China.
China does not hesitate over its methods, even when they involve the theft of classified information or items subject to export restrictions.
Its ruthlessness lies in using stolen technology to market products around the world, driving the American companies that created the technology out of business, and taking over their markets.
Regrettably, examples of this can also be found in Japan.
It is widely known that China acquired the intellectual property represented by Japan’s Shinkansen technology, copied it in its entirety, falsely described it as “indigenous Chinese technology,” and marketed it throughout the world.
China has now once again recruited, at high salaries, a team of approximately thirty Japanese engineers involved in JR Central’s Linear Chuo Shinkansen and is developing what it calls a “Chinese-made” linear-motor train.
It is said that the superconducting and electromagnetic technologies used in the linear-motor train can be directly diverted to military applications.
According to Fumio Ota, a former Vice Admiral and a member of the Planning Committee of the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, these technologies can be used for inexpensive railguns—electromagnetic acceleration weapons—capable of continuous fire, as well as electromagnetic catapults used to launch aircraft from carriers.
The day will eventually come when weapons employing such advanced technology are directed at the Japanese archipelago.
The fuel-cell vehicle technology that Toyota Motor has agreed to develop jointly with Chinese companies can likewise be diverted to engines for submarines capable of operating silently underwater.
China’s enormous market certainly cannot be ignored, but how much of Japan’s national interest is being sacrificed for short-term economic gain?
Moreover, even within foreign companies operating in China, if there is a prescribed number of Communist Party members, the companies are required to maintain a Party branch—a “cell.”
Every aspect of corporate activity is monitored, and every detail of technological development is exposed.
Indeed, the Xi Jinping administration has acted without restraint through military coercion, predatory diplomacy, unfair trade, disregard for international law, cyberattacks, and various forms of espionage.
President Xi has only one objective: to realize his dream of China “standing tall among the nations” by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
The pandemic has brought the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-civilizational misconduct into full view.
The Trump administration has raised its approach toward the Chinese Communist Party by one level, moving beyond its previous definition of “strategic competition” and accelerating its actions against China as a “strategic threat.”
Even if China underestimates President Trump’s own governing ability, it would be unwise to underestimate America’s national power or the will and capabilities of the United States military.
Now that the confrontation between the United States and China has reached this stage, a clash may occur accidentally, and at times the United States may actively exploit China’s vulnerabilities.
Shifting the well-intentioned “engagement policy” toward China pursued by successive American administrations into a strategy of deterrence against China has now become the tacit consensus among Washington’s foreign-policy elite.
Consequently, even if a Biden administration is created by a Democratic victory in the November presidential election, America’s hard-line policy toward China will not change.