Originally published on February 13, 2020. This article introduces Masayuki Takayama’s column in Shukan Shincho and criticizes the structure of international scams using the United Nations and NGOs, focusing on CO2 emission rights, Maurice Strong, Greta Thunberg, Jubilee 2000, Britain’s debt-cancellation maneuver, Japan’s ODA, and China’s receipt of aid-related contracts. It argues that China’s prosperity has bloomed upon Japan’s folly.

February 13, 2020
China, finding itself in a poor position, tried bringing out the climate-change girl Greta Thunberg, but how effective will that be?
There was another international scam of this kind in the same 1990s.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s serialized column, which closes the issue of Shukan Shincho released today.
A friend of mine, who is one of the greatest readers I know, said that he and I are in a complementary relationship, and this essay proves that his assessment also hit the mark.
With the extraordinary skill that makes him the one and only journalist in the postwar world, Masayuki Takayama proves the correctness of my continuing criticism, since the other day, of the United Nations, COP25, and Greta Thunberg by thrusting PM2.5 pollution maps before them.
Not only the Japanese people, but people all over the world will surely marvel and say that Masayuki Takayama is truly extraordinary.
Not Stupid
China’s air is filthy.
It contains soot, exhaust gas, and the terrifying PM2.5.
But what is remarkable about the Chinese is that they wondered whether even such pollution could be turned into money.
So China “teamed up with the Canadian fraudster Maurice Strong,” Watanabe Sōki wrote in the Sankei Shimbun the other day.
They first spread the theory that the cause of climate change, such as recent abnormal warm winters, was “excessively concentrated CO².”
They said it had become concentrated because “advanced industrial countries such as Japan had been emitting it for many years,” and therefore emissions should be reduced.
If they could not reduce them, they should buy CO² emission rights from developing countries.
However, China, which currently emits the most CO², was given no responsibility because it was “a developing country.”
Strong, backed by China, then became chairman of the Rio Earth Summit and spread the fraudulent story in the name of the United Nations.
Chinese NGOs served as its hands and feet.
Japan, weak before the United Nations, was easily deceived and has been paying China 100 billion yen every year under the name of emission rights.
Recently, Strong’s true identity has been exposed, and the biological community has also warned that if CO² decreases any further, plants that use it as nourishment will die.
China, finding itself in a poor position, tried bringing out the climate-change girl Greta Thunberg, but how effective will that be?
There was another international scam of this kind in the same 1990s.
The fraudster was Clare Short, Britain’s Secretary of State for International Development.
The victim, once again, was Japan.
The stage was the countries south of the Sahara, where HIV was then rampant.
Patients came one after another to former colonial powers such as Britain and France in search of better medical care.
The social medical costs of Britain and France were about to burst.
They wanted to drive out the HIV refugees, but doing so would make them look inhuman.
Clare thought of an idea.
How about having the advanced countries cancel the loan-aid claims they held against the countries south of the Sahara?
The poor countries could use the money they would otherwise have had to repay to build hospitals locally.
Then there would no longer be any need for them to go through the trouble of going to Britain.
It was a beautiful story, but Britain’s amount of aid was zero.
The largest aid donor was Japan, which had provided as much as one trillion dollars.
If the debts were to be cancelled, she should have bowed her head to Japan, but instead she declared, “Japan’s aid is tied aid.
It is a merciless dinosaur that preys on the poorest countries.”
For the honor of Japan, I should say that tied aid accounted for only about ten percent of the total, in specialized fields such as medicine.
It was nothing but a false accusation, but it was spread by the British-backed NGO “Jubilee 2000.”
In Japan, the Tokyo Catholic Church and the Asahi Shimbun spread Clare’s lies, saying things like “stand with the weak.”
In the end, Japan abandoned a total of six trillion yen in loan aid and other claims that were due to be repaid over the ten years from 2003, and at the same time decided to abolish so-called tied aid.
Britain, meanwhile, built hospitals locally with the claims Japan had abandoned, played the role of a former colonial power standing with the weak, and was also able to prevent medical refugees.
Speaking of standing with the weak, Japan has Shinjiro Koizumi.
As soon as he became environment minister, he stood with Fukushima fishermen and said, “Even if it is harmless, tritium will not be discharged.”
Fishermen receive fishing rights for free.
There is also the option of buying them up.
But he cannot do anything that would cause friction.
On top of that, at COP25 he was insulted with the Fossil Award by climate-change NGOs.
Could he not at least have said that China, their employer, was the more appropriate recipient?
Shinjiro, who is useless no matter what he does, recently, and unusually loudly, complained about aid for the construction of a thermal power plant in Vietnam.
He was merely pretending to be a good boy by saying that exporting thermal power generation, which emits CO², could not be permitted, but he did voice the simple question: “Why are all the construction contracts going to China?”
In fact, after Japan stopped tying its aid, China has received most of Japan’s ODA, which amounts to nearly one trillion yen every year.
Japan gave China trillions of yen in ODA and also bought CO² emission rights.
On top of that, Chinese people were going overseas with Japanese money to carry out aid projects.
China’s prosperity bloomed upon Japan’s folly.
Enough of China.
If Japan takes to heart the fact that Shinjiro struck upon, revives tied aid, and brings back nuclear power plants that do not emit CO², then no one will be able to call it stupid anymore.