2022-11-30
The following is from a special roundtable discussion published in the January 2023 issue of the monthly magazine WiLL, released on November 25, 2022, under the title “I Want to Curse It to Death—Xi Jinping’s Dictatorship!”, featuring four participants: Tomoko Ako, Professor at the University of Tokyo; Lumei Tan, writer; Yi Yang, writer; and Yanzi Liu, scholar of Chinese literature.
As I have mentioned repeatedly, WiLL and Hanada cost just 980 yen despite being packed with substantive articles!
It is no exaggeration whatsoever to say that they are currently the finest monthly magazines in the world.
This article is essential reading not only for every Japanese citizen but also for people throughout the world.
It is essential reading for everyone, young and old, men and women, and especially for all young people.
Some passages already foreshadowed the developments now taking place in China.
Emphasis within the text, other than in the headings, is mine.

“This Is No City for Human Beings to Live In”
Liu
I have not returned to China for about four years, but people like Yang and me, who speak out against the dictatorship, may never be able to return.
Yang
I have no intention of going back, though.
But I am too afraid to go back.
Liu
I come from Hunan Province, the same province as Mao Zedong, a very conservative region.
My family is in Hunan, so I am very worried…
When was the last time you went back, Yang?
Yang
In 2019.
I visited Beijing for the first time in eleven years, and what I saw there were countless surveillance cameras attached to every pole along the streets, like cancer cells.
Every road was also divided by multiple layers of iron fencing, police vehicles were parked on street corners, and officers of all kinds—special units, public security officers, and armed police—were watching the citizens.
When I asked a hotel staff member, “Is some foreign dignitary visiting?” the reply was, “It’s always like this.”
When I revealed that I had come back from Tokyo, I was told, “You’d better not come back anymore. This is no city for human beings to live in.”
Liu
How terrifying.
In 2009, the year before Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel Peace Prize, I published From the Tiananmen Incident to Charter 08, a collection I edited primarily around his writings, and as a result, I was once warned indirectly by the Chinese embassy, “Do not speak out in the media.”
After that, I received strange phone calls saying things such as, “You’d better not make a fuss. They are angry,” and the harassment and silent phone calls continued.
Yang
After I published My Enemy, Xi Jinping, I too kept receiving silent phone calls and became unable to contact my relatives in China.
After that, I deleted the contact details of people who might be deemed “connected to me” and made myself unreachable to my family and friends.
It was sad.
Ako
The Chinese human rights lawyers I support are also having their families threatened in the same way.
There are countless others suffering under pressure from the Chinese Communist Party.