Published on August 5, 2019.
This article introduces a discussion from the monthly magazine Sound Argument featuring Sekihei, Yang Haiying, and Yaita Akio, and criticizes Japanese media coverage of the U.S.-China trade war around the G20 Osaka Summit.
It argues that China, not the United States, is the world’s greatest protectionist state, while pretending to champion free trade as it engages in intellectual property theft, forced technology transfer, capital controls, and debt-trap diplomacy through the Belt and Road Initiative.
The article also criticizes NHK reporting, including an interview with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in which the announcer referred to Xi Jinping as “Xi-san,” and questions whether parts of the Japanese media are effectively serving the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda apparatus.

August 5, 2019.
Regarding the G20 recently held in Osaka, the Japanese media reported as if America were the villain of protectionist trade.
However, the greatest protectionist state is, in fact, China.
The following is from a special dialogue published in this month’s issue of the monthly magazine Sound Argument under the title “Confront the Yakuza State (China),” featuring the anti-communist trio Sekihei, Yang Haiying, and Yaita Akio.
Before sending this chapter to the Japanese people and to the whole world, I will write about what happened the other day when I was watching a scene on Watch 9 in which Arima was interviewing Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen.
I was only half-watching it, so for a moment I wondered whether I had misheard, but when Arima asked President Tsai a question about China, at first he said, “Xi-san…”.
In the present situation in which Taiwan finds itself, what on earth is an NHK announcer who says “Xi-san” to the president of Taiwan?
With his “Xi-san,” I became convinced that the people in NHK’s news department—especially these Arimas—must frequently meet, with the faces of representatives of the NHK labor union, with people connected to the Chinese Embassy and people connected to China’s intelligence organs, and must be receiving their guidance.
The second time, as one would expect, he said, “President Xi…”.
Yang:
Regarding the G20 recently held in Osaka, the Japanese media reported as if America were the villain of protectionist trade.
However, the greatest protectionist state is, in fact, China.
I do not think China’s trade can possibly be called free trade.
What do you think?
Sekihei:
That is absolutely right.
What China is doing is not free trade or anything of the sort.
Whether in information or in the financial field, the country that most refuses to open its market to the world and rejects free trade is China.
Then why does China loudly proclaim free trade?
There is a proverb in Chinese meaning, “The one shouting, ‘That man is a thief,’ is the real thief,” and China is doing exactly that.
The structure is that China, which is practicing protectionism, labels America as protectionist in reverse so that the arrow will not be directed at itself, while calling itself a free-trade country.
Yang:
In other words, the Japanese mass media have been completely fooled by that.
Sekihei:
Whether they have been completely fooled by the Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Department, or whether they are pretending to have been fooled.
In any case, when I look at the reporting and commentary of some Japanese newspapers and television stations, I really begin to think that they are working for the Chinese Propaganda Department.
The Chinese Propaganda Department is probably delighted.
After all, they are doing the work without even being paid.
In reality, America is imposing punitive tariffs on China in order to protect true free trade, and although America postponed the activation of the fourth round of punitive tariffs, that by no means signifies the end of the trade war.
The tariffs imposed so far on 250 billion dollars’ worth of goods are still alive.
From America’s point of view, if it were suddenly to impose the fourth round of tariffs now, the impact on people’s daily lives would be large, and because of such domestic circumstances, there is also an aspect in which it seems to have postponed them in order to buy time.
We must not be deceived by beautiful words.
Yaita:
Certainly, among the Japanese mass media, there are reports that make it seem as if America, which started the U.S.-China trade war, is the aggressor and China is the victim.
If you think about it carefully, America is only saying that rules should be made and that those rules should be observed.
On the other hand, even if rules are made, China does not try to observe them at all.
A typical example is that Japanese companies that have entered China now cannot freely take money out of the country.
This is a serious problem, and many companies are forced, against their will, to reinvest inside China.
No matter how much they earn, they have no choice but to use that money to expand their business inside China.
Companies cannot complain to China about this at all, and the Japanese government can do nothing either.
In fact, if China comes to properly observe the rules as a result of the U.S.-China trade war, it will be Japanese companies that benefit.
America is actually doing this for Japan’s sake as well, but the media lack that perspective.
Yang:
Even money that foreign companies or individuals have obtained in China through legitimate channels cannot be taken out of the country.
It makes one wonder what on earth about this is free trade.
Sekihei:
To put it simply, the present “U.S.-China trade war” is a situation in which America, as the world’s policeman, is doing its best because it must somehow deal with a thief in order to protect everyone’s interests, but that thief, in reverse, is saying, “The police are the thieves.”
The problem is that ordinary citizens who should be supporting the police sometimes treat the police as the villain and sympathize with the thief.
Originally, if China had observed the rules of the WTO, the World Trade Organization, there would have been no need at all for America to launch a trade war against China.
What America is now demanding in negotiations with China is, in short, do not steal intellectual property rights and technology, and stop forced technology transfer.
In other words, all China has to do is stop its acts of theft.
The troublesome part, however, is that this thief happens to be a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
It is like saying that a thief is on the panel of referees.
Yang:
China is a country that always uses the most beautiful words in the world to do the dirtiest work.
The same is true inside China, where the Communist Party uses every possible means to suppress the people so that they cannot become richer than necessary.
Therefore, in China, for example, even IT companies and the like are deliberately fostered when they are necessary for the Communist Party, but as for whether they enrich ordinary people, they do not.
The party takes land away from farmers, and it even restricts farmers from moving freely.
And Communist Party members are forever the vested-interest holders and the bourgeoisie.
When students at Peking University and Tsinghua University say, “This is strange,” and create something like a “Marx Study Group” in order to return to the original point, they are arrested.
Sekihei:
In connection with what you have just said, if Marx were alive in present-day China, he would certainly be arrested by Xi Jinping.
Lu Xun, too, if he were in present-day China, would have been executed long ago.
The world of Naniwa Kin’yūdō.
Yang:
Domestically, the Communist Party has become the bourgeois class that exploits the people.
And the Communist Party wants to conquer the world.
China, which has gone from being a petty thief to becoming a pirate, now wants to conquer both land and sea, with the Road on the sea and the Belt on land.
The reason the Belt and Road Initiative is meeting resistance from surrounding countries is none other than that China wants from the outset to impose unequal treaties and conduct unequal trade.
But China itself does not think it is doing anything wrong.
Rather, China believes that justice is on its side.
That is why, as I always say, when China speaks of “China-Japan friendship,” it means, “Japan must listen to what China says.”
And when China speaks of “ethnic unity,” it means that the various ethnic groups must listen to what the Han Chinese say.
Sekihei:
The Belt and Road story is, in the end, the method of illegal finance, or financial yakuza.
There is a manga set in Osaka called Naniwa Kin’yūdō, and it is like the loan sharks that often appear in it: they deliberately lend money at such high rates that the borrower cannot repay it, and then they take everything away.
They take the company, and in some cases they even take the young lady of the house.
In short, what Xi Jinping is doing is financial yakuza itself.
Toward advanced countries, China acts as a thief and steals technology, and toward weak countries in the Third World, it has the face of a yakuza.
And toward its own people, it is already a complete dictatorship.
Furthermore, toward ethnic minorities, it is Hitler.
Yaita:
When President Trump, acting as the police, tries to crack down on the yakuza, then they use the law as a weapon and start saying, “Even yakuza have human rights,” don’t they?
Sekihei:
Even though they themselves are violating human rights the most, only when the police come do they say, “I have human rights.”
Yang:
Then left-wing human-rights lawyers appear and try to protect the human rights of the yakuza.
Sekihei:
Yes, exactly.
They say, “The police are bad.”
In fact, Japanese society has also become that way, hasn’t it?
When something happens, Japan often protects the human rights of the perpetrator more than the human rights of the victim, and that kind of trend has encouraged the Chinese Communist Party.
Yang:
The yakuza who usually runs wild, when the time comes, says, “I am the victim.
Protect my human rights.”
Then human-rights lawyers always appear, and it becomes, “The police are bad.”
To be continued.