This article presents a reconstructed English version of the WiLL January issue dialogue “Japanese Do Not Understand Who the Real Chinese Are,” featuring journalist Masayuki Takayama and Professor Emeritus Katsuo Hiizumi.
Drawing on historical records, Lin Yutang’s classic analyses, and modern Chinese politics, the discussion dismantles long-standing Japanese illusions about a “moral China,” exposing instead a reality shaped by arbitrary rule, pervasive bribery, fabricated history, and a deeply entrenched “slave mentality.”
From Mao’s Great Leap Forward and religious uprisings crushed by the CCP, to the nature of overseas Chinese communities, Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaigns, wolf-warrior diplomacy, the Sun Yat-sen myth, and gruesome anti-Japanese propaganda, the dialogue argues that Japan must abandon sentimental Sinophilia and approach China with cold-eyed realism and a “taoguang yanghui”–style diplomatic strategy.
The authors urge Japanese readers to re-examine China’s true character, free themselves from victor-imposed guilt narratives, and support a tougher, more clear-sighted foreign policy under Prime Minister Takaichi.

Japanese People Do Not Understand Who the Real Chinese Are

Japanese people have continued to harbor illusions about China.
Now is the time to wake up!

A China That Will Not Allow Dynastic Revolution (Yixing Geming)

Takayama:
Who are the Chinese, really?
Japanese researchers have given absolutely no serious thought to that question.
Kazumi Kobayashi, Professor Emeritus at Kanagawa University, wrote a short essay titled “Rebels Who Dream of Becoming Sons of Heaven of the Middle Kingdom.”

Kobayashi first visited China in 1980 and stayed one night in Jining, Shandong Province.
There, a public notice caught his eye stating that several “counterrevolutionaries” had been executed.
He wrote:
“I had done some research on uprisings by heterodox religious sects and on rebellions by secret societies in the Ming and Qing periods.
But I was completely taken aback, because I had never imagined that in the People’s Republic of China—guided by the great socialist revolutionary Mao Zedong and serving as the sacred center of the world revolution—there would still exist ‘heretics’ just like the White Lotus rebels of the Ming and Qing periods.”
You can only be stunned that a Japanese scholar would praise Mao Zedong like this.

Hiizumi:
The political scientist Mineo Nakajima was also shocked when he saw the Cultural Revolution.
He said, “Why is China, a moral nation, doing such things?” (laughs).

Takayama:
There is no way China is a “moral nation” (laughs).
What I still find somewhat admirable about China is that, according to the Gazetteer of Hebei Province, there were ten recorded incidents of people who rose up opposing the socialist regime, declared the founding of a new dynasty, and planned revolts to proclaim a new emperor.
And the Gazetteer of Shandong Province records that between 1954 and 1984 there were 2,503 rebellions, and that 217 people who tried to seize the throne were arrested.
The fact that executions continued into the 1980s is also surprising.

Hiizumi:
On YouTube you can find videos of executions in China.
They are truly fascinating.

Takayama:
Beginning in 1958, China launched the Great Leap Forward, which produced tens of millions of deaths by starvation.
Mao Zedong ordered how to dispose of the countless dead, saying, “The corpses can be buried in the fields, they will make good fertilizer.”
He never cared in the slightest about the people.
That is why in religious organizations like Yiguandao and many others, hundreds of emperors or founders rose up to overthrow the communist system.
You might have thought that someone would succeed in a revolution, but the communist regime crushed them all.
The Chinese Communist Party was so strong that it would not allow even the traditional pattern of dynastic revolution to take place.

Hiizumi:
Then have today’s Chinese people already given up on the communist system?
In no way is that the case.
Chinese families are buying up luxury high-rise condominiums in central Tokyo.
The Japanese government is finally moving to regulate this.
But why do Chinese people buy land and real estate in Japan?
Some commentators say, “They have lost faith in the Xi Jinping regime and are fleeing,” but is that really true?

If we look at the history of the overseas Chinese, they will go anywhere in the world if there is money to be made.
And just because they have emigrated does not mean that they resolutely oppose the Xi Jinping regime.
If they see a chance to make money, they may well go back to China.

Takayama:
What I rather admire is that, although overseas Chinese wreaked such havoc across Southeast Asia until the early Meiji period, they were never able to put down roots in Japan.
It was fortunate that at that time there were no scholars like the Kobayashi we just mentioned, but what about now?
As long as one believes China to be a normal country or respects it as such, one can never hope to understand the true nature of the Chinese.

What Is “Great” About the Chinese?

Hiizumi:
In The Importance of Living and other works by Lin Yutang—one of which was published in New York in 1935 and in Japanese as China: Culture and Thought (Kodansha Gakujutsu Bunko)—there are many fascinating observations about China.
Anyone in Japan who is interested in China and the Chinese should read him.

For example, he writes:
“The greatness of the Chinese people perhaps lies in the fact that, while they possess the capacity to establish a supreme code of law based on the fundamental principle of rewarding good and punishing evil, they are also able to refuse to believe in the very laws and courts they themselves have created.
Ninety-five percent of disputes that would have to be brought before a court in other countries are settled outside the courts in China.”

He also says:
“(The Chinese) can destroy, ignore, cheat, play with, and manipulate every kind of rule, regulation, and institution.”
He describes this as “the greatness of the Chinese people as a nation.”

Takayama:
That is a fine passage (laughs).
Japanese think it is right and proper to strictly observe rules.
That is why they are so easy to take advantage of.

Hiizumi:
There is also this passage:
“Even if a great upheaval should occur and China should come under the rule of a communist government, it is not that this strict, seemingly impersonal form of government will destroy the old traditions, but rather that the old traditions of individuality, tolerance, moderation, and common sense will pulverize communism from within and strip it of its substance, transforming it into something so different that it can scarcely be recognized as communism.
That is what will certainly happen.”
That is why today’s Chinese communism is a counterfeit.

Takayama:
They never had any firm principles in the first place and simply interpret everything in whatever way suits them.
If Marx were to see the communist system in today’s China, there is no doubt he would be utterly astonished (laughs).

Hiizumi:
Furthermore, Lin Yutang writes:
“The Chinese are, all of them, beyond reproach as good people, and the most common verb conjugation in Chinese grammar is that of the verb ‘to take bribes.’
That is, ‘I take bribes.
You take bribes.
He takes bribes.
We take bribes.
You (plural) take bribes.
They take bribes.’
This verb ‘to take bribes’ is a regular verb.”
Japanese know far too little of this real image of the Chinese.

He also offers the following observation:
“In practice, there are only two classes in China.
One is the bureaucratic class, which enjoys privileges.
The other is the non-bureaucratic class, that is, the common people, who must pay taxes and obey the law.”
In other words, today’s Chinese system can be divided into Communist Party members and non–Party members.
We must understand that Chinese have a nature completely different from that of Japan and the Japanese.
They are certainly not a “moral nation.”

Takayama:
To put it bluntly, the Chinese have a deeply ingrained slave mentality.
They have no tradition and no history in the true sense.
That is why they have no public spirit that would move them to keep their country, their towns, or their surroundings clean and beautiful.
Because they were slaves, even if they cleaned up the place where they were, they never knew where they would be taken the next day.
In such conditions, the mindset of settling down and caring for one’s surroundings could not develop.
It is said that the “qiao” in “overseas Chinese” (huaqiao) means “wandering” or “rootless,” and that is exactly right.

Hiizumi:
In other words, the Chinese themselves are essentially all “overseas Chinese.”
They lived in the central plains along the Yellow River and then kept moving from there.
The overseas Chinese are merely those Chinese who went beyond the borders; their essence does not change at all.

Takayama:
They lie with no sense of guilt and do terrible things without any sense of wrongdoing.
The worst kind of bad character from the Japanese perspective—people who feel no hesitation in lying and cheating—are precisely the Chinese.
On top of that, communism has entered into them.
They are impossible to deal with.

Hiizumi:
Lin Yutang also writes:
“What China needs now is not moral education for her politicians but prisons for them.
(…)
The only way to keep officials honest is to threaten them with the death penalty once their corruption is exposed.”
What Xi Jinping is doing is exactly this.

Takayama:
You could say the same of “wolf warrior diplomacy.”
For example, if you ask people who have studied in China, they all say, “Among the Chinese there are people who are more capable than the Japanese.”
There are none (laughs).
If there were really so many people superior to the Japanese, China would have become a decent country long ago, one that understands manners and propriety.
But in reality, as Michael Pillsbury points out, nothing has changed even after China has grown rich.

Hiizumi:
Even if only ten percent of the Chinese were like that, they would still outnumber the Japanese.
There are only two kinds of people in this world: good people and bad people.
The Chinese population is twelve or thirteen times that of Japan.
That means there are twelve or thirteen times as many stupid, ill-natured Chinese as there are Japanese.
At the same time, there are just as many clever, ill-natured Chinese.
In that sense, the Japanese will have to work fifteen times harder than they do now if they are to stand up to China.

Takayama:
Prime Minister Takaichi’s remark that we must “work, work, work, and work” is therefore absolutely correct (laughs).
Just as Shinzo Abe once adopted a policy of “strategic neglect” toward South Korea, we should revere China from a distance and keep it at arm’s length.
Japanese must not deal with China on a straightforward, good-faith basis.
If we are to deal with them at all, we should use as diplomats people like the Jews—those who understand exactly how cunning the Chinese are and who also value contracts.
Japanese diplomats alone cannot match them.

Hiizumi:
Former ambassador to China, Hideo Tarumi, recently published The Secret Record of Japan–China Diplomacy (Bungeishunjū).
There was only one disappointing passage when I read it.
Tarumi proudly recounts how he brought young Chinese intellectuals and bureaucrats to Japan and let them study here.
When they praised Japan and said, “Japan is wonderful,” Tarumi told them, “I want you to become the Sun Yat-sen of the present age.”
But there is hardly anyone as fraudulent as Sun Yat-sen.
Even someone of Tarumi’s caliber misjudges Sun Yat-sen.

Takayama:
Sun Yat-sen did not pass the imperial examinations.
He spoke English, but he lacked even the ABCs required of someone who would stand at the top of China.
When he was idling in Denver, Colorado, the Xinhai Revolution broke out.
If Sun Yat-sen had truly been a revolutionary, he would have flown back to China at once.
Instead, he went on to New York and London to devote himself to fundraising, and only came back near the end of the year.
He was a con artist who used “revolution” as a pretext, and in addition he was hopelessly dissolute with women.

Hiizumi:
The businessman Shōkichi Umeya, active in that era, was a supporter of Sun Yat-sen and is said to have provided him with financial aid equivalent to one trillion yen in today’s money.
The nationalist Mitsuru Tōyama also gave Sun Yat-sen generous backing.
Yet after the revolution, Sun Yat-sen kicked sand in Japan’s face and turned to cooperate with the Soviet Union.

A Han People Emerging from the Mists

Takayama:
Japanese have continued to harbor illusions about China.
Even Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) by Sima Qian is highly esteemed in Japan, but more than half of it is fiction.
Looking back two thousand years of Chinese history, Sima Qian realized that the Han people were, after all, nothing more than slaves.
That would not do, so he first invented a fictitious Han Chinese state called “Xia” and began writing from there.

Hiizumi:
It is terrifying that Japanese scholars are conducting “China studies” on the basis of that fabricated history.
On the other hand, some American scholars argue, “We do not know where the Han people came from.”
Lloyd E. Eastman, in Family, Fields, and Ancestors (Japanese edition China’s Society, Heibonsha, 1994), writes that the Han “emerged from the mists of prehistory on the loess plateau of northwestern China.”
That is the most accurate description.

Takayama:
It is often said they originated in the central plains.

Hiizumi:
They say, “This is our homeland,” but there is no evidence for it whatsoever.

Takayama:
Former ambassador to Ukraine, Mutsuo Mabuchi, cites Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story “The Smile of the Gods” and says that the Japanese possess “the power to transform.”
He argues that Japan has the power to “Japanize” anything—Christianity or whatever else.
The Chinese, by contrast, seem the complete opposite.
They lie as they please and grab every kind of wealth they can.
There is a kind of Chinese mentality there.
As I said earlier, it is nothing less than a “slave mentality.”
Many different peoples, such as the Manchus and the Uyghurs, have been incorporated into China, but none of them have tried to assimilate into that Chinese mentality.
Only those who adopted that mentality remained as “Han Chinese.”
That is the reality, is it not?

Hiizumi:
That is why countries around the world end up being toyed with by China.
Take, for example, Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of “taoguang yanghui” (hide one’s capacities and bide one’s time).
The Western countries, including the United States, were completely deceived.
However, the kind of strategy Japan’s diplomacy now needs may well be “taoguang yanghui.”
We should adopt such a strategy toward China, South and North Korea, and even the United States.

Takayama:
But the level of our diplomats, including the aforementioned Tarumi, is far too low.
Those who aspire to be China specialists start by studying the Chinese language.
In doing so, more than half of them end up absorbing the Chinese way of thinking.

Hiizumi:
Japan has looked up to the Chinese for more than a century and still continues to misunderstand them.

Takayama:
Even though in the Sino-Japanese War we were treated brutally by the Chinese, once the war was over, we simply forgot.
In prisoner exchanges, the Japanese Army took 780 wounded prisoners and restored them to health before sending them back.
Meanwhile, Japanese captured by Qing forces had their arms and legs cut off, their eyes gouged out, and their bodies torn to pieces and hung from the eaves.
That is the kind of people we were dealing with.

Hiizumi:
The Japanese must once again grasp the true, unvarnished image of the Chinese.

Takayama:
In 1928, Chiang Kai-shek’s troops attacked Japanese residents in Jinan, Shandong Province, looted their property, and in the process brutally murdered sixteen people.
A twenty-four-year-old woman, after being raped, had the skin stripped from her upper body, her breasts cut off, and a stick thrust into her genitals before she was killed.
Because the killing was so atrocious, the Japanese authorities banned the publication of the details in the newspapers.
Later, China took advantage of that “top secret” status and used the photographs of the mutilated body in its textbooks as images of the Japanese Army’s “Unit 731” vivisecting Chinese women alive, to inflame the narrative of “cruel Japan.”
There is not a shred of morality in this national character.

Yet in Japan, groundless theories of “atonement toward China” have spread, and under a diplomatic line of “keeping everything amicable,” we have never criticized such vicious propaganda.
We allowed these lies to stand unchallenged.
And when they are pointed out, what happens?
When Prime Minister Takaichi merely suggested the possibility of a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan, Chinese Consul General in Osaka Xue Jian responded with abuse, saying he would “cut off that dirty head” of the prime minister and that “China can at any time carry out military punishment of Japan, and Japan has completely forgotten the former enemy state clauses in the United Nations Charter.”
This is a good example.
The Chinese think that diplomacy means intimidation.

As Professor Hiizumi says, using a strategy of “taoguang yanghui” against such Chinese may be a good idea.
Prime Minister Takaichi may well, through an even more astute diplomacy, succeed in cutting China down to size.
I place great hopes in her.