Based on Masayuki Takayama’s column, this article examines China’s pattern of shifting blame through historical and contemporary examples, including the Second Shanghai Incident, the breaching of the Yellow River dikes, the Zhengding church incident, and the new coronavirus outbreak.
It analyzes how China has repeatedly attempted to turn its own failures and acts of harm into accusations against other countries, especially Japan.

March 12, 2020
Even though it is so clear that China produced it and Chinese people transmitted it, what is astonishing is that Xi Jinping does not think so.
First, he had Pacific island countries such as the Solomon Islands, whose politics and economy China has seized, loudly declare that Japanese people would be banned from entering.
The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s regular column, which brings up the rear of the Weekly Shincho issue released today.
This essay also proves that he is the one and only journalist in the postwar world.
The bad habit of the Chinese.
A crack force of 60,000 Chinese troops attacked the foreign settlement in Shanghai.
It was the summer of 1937.
This is the so-called Second Shanghai Incident.
But the target was only the Japanese settlement, and not a single bullet flew into the neighboring French settlement.
Only a small number of naval landing forces defended the Japanese settlement.
The French watched the one-sided battle from the rooftops of buildings.
They knew that it was Chiang Kai-shek’s game of slaughtering Japanese, instigated by the United States and Germany.
It may be wrong to say it served them right, but the Chinese air force trained by the U.S. military was so incompetent that it actually dropped bombs on that French settlement, killing 450 people.
Two other planes also mistakenly bombed the Cathay Hotel and the Great World entertainment center, bringing the total number of dead to 1,500.
Among them were American missionaries who had stirred up anti-Japanese sentiment and Robert, the brother of E. Reischauer, later U.S. ambassador to Japan.
Contrary to expectations, however, the slaughterous battle ended with the attacking Chiang Kai-shek forces being defeated and beginning to retreat.
Before this battle, they had also caused the Tongzhou Incident, in which 220 Japanese were tortured and killed.
Repeated brutality could not be ignored.
The Japanese army decided to pursue them, and one force went up the Yangtze River in pursuit of the fleeing Chinese army.
The Chinese army was of poor quality.
In the city of Jiujiang, they looted food, scattered plague bacteria into wells, and then headed for the strategic point of Wuhan.
Their calculation was this:
“The Japanese army cannot abandon the miserable state of Jiujiang. We can gain time to escape.”
In fact, the pursuing Fifth Division “spent more than a week purifying wells and supplying food to the citizens.”
This is from Shinzaburo Nakajima’s Diary of a Former Soldier.
The Japanese army also aimed for Wuhan from the Yellow River side.
At Xuzhou, in the opening battle, it surrounded and smashed Chinese forces three times its size and pressed on toward Lanfeng.
Chiang Kai-shek, terrified by the Japanese advance, breached several sections of the Yellow River embankment, which was as much as 300 meters wide.
Later, Guo Moruo confessed that Chiang “believed this would stop the Japanese army.”
Akira Nakakoji wrote in The Theory of World War:
“It was the rainy season, and the swollen muddy torrent of the great Yellow River rushed forward, raising white waves and turning the great fertile plains of South China into a swamp.”
In Japanese terms, it was as if the area from Kanto to Kansai had been submerged.
As a result, “one million people drowned, hundreds of thousands fled in panic, and the area became a scene of hellish cries.”
That is from the same book.
Seeing the devastation, the Japanese troops stationed in Kaifeng sent out boats large and small to rescue the victims.
The Chinese army aimed at them and fired, and many Japanese soldiers died.
Chiang was wicked.
He sent this merciless atrocity out to the world with a straight face, saying, “The Japanese army bombed the Yellow River and caused it to breach.”
He blamed his own evil acts on others and loudly condemned them.
Japan denied it.
But “we did not do it” sounds weak and lacks persuasive force.
Only Chiang Kai-shek laughed loudly.
During this pursuit operation, a group of Chinese forced their way into a church in Zhengding, Hebei Province, and burned alive seven people, including Dutch priests.
It was a method very typical of the Chinese, but Jiang Zemin remade it into “a crime by the Japanese army.”
The anti-Japanese Dutch newspapers, while knowing it was a lie, happily wrote it up.
The source of the new coronavirus from Wuhan is said to be the horseshoe bat.
It lives in Japan and Europe as well, but only the Chinese have eaten it.
That is how it infected Chinese people, and Chinese people then went out into the world and spread it.
In Japan, the first case was a Chinese person who contracted it in Wuhan and brought it in through Narita by deceiving quarantine with fever reducers.
A Chinese person who boarded the Diamond Princess while pretending to be “from Hong Kong” followed.
After that, tourists who came to the Sapporo Snow Festival and to a soy sauce wholesaler in Wakayama helped spread it.
Even though it is so clear that China produced it and Chinese people transmitted it, what is astonishing is that Xi Jinping does not think so.
First, he had Pacific island countries such as the Solomon Islands, whose politics and economy China has seized, loudly declare that Japanese people would be banned from entering.
Next, he had Tedros of the WHO say that “China is moving toward containment,” while at the same time having him call Japan one of the “countries of greatest concern.”
In response, Beijing ordered Japanese entrants to be held for fourteen days.
In diplomatic documents, it used confusing expressions such as “new Japanese pneumonia.”
They think that if they do this, they can blame Japan, just as they did with the Yellow River breach.
It is not a country with which one should force oneself to associate.