This essay argues that China’s strategy toward Japan is not open conflict but psychological warfare aimed at dividing public opinion. By inducing economic anxiety and undermining support for the Abe administration, China exploits media actors who, knowingly or not, act in line with its objectives—most visibly in Okinawa.

February 14, 2016

It goes without saying that the collapse of the Shanghai market last summer was the result of China’s inherent maladies or structural defects.

The recent sharp appreciation of the yen and the massive collapse of Japanese stock prices are entirely different in nature from that.

Nazi states and totalitarian states maintain their legitimacy and national unity by portraying other countries as enemies. They constantly wage psychological warfare against those enemy nations fabricated by their own lies.

In other words, it would not be an exaggeration to say that psychological warfare is everything to them.

China’s current strategy toward Japan is to persistently seek the division of Japanese public opinion. Serious scholars have pointed this out, and needless to say, they are entirely correct.

In addition, it is obvious to anyone that the current Chinese government wants, by any means necessary, to bring down the Abe administration and reduce public support for it.

The greatest reason the Abe administration has enjoyed our support lies in its bold economic policies, which shattered the foolish stagnation of the past thirty years—this too is a clear fact.

Unlike previous governors of the Bank of Japan, who for decades implemented policies shaped by reading and believing the Asahi Shimbun and who inflicted losses of as much as 1,400 trillion yen on Japan over just twenty years, Governor Kuroda is clearly pursuing policies befitting a country in which the “Turntable of Civilization” is turning.

China’s desire to crush public support for the Abe administration and Governor Kuroda is evident even in its refusal to answer phone calls since January 6.

At the same time, China possesses enough money to easily cause a massive collapse of the Tokyo Stock Exchange like the one we have just seen, and thereby instill anxiety in the Japanese public.

Rather than suspecting such actors, who is it that is moving exactly according to their wishes?

Asahi, you should know shame. If the Asahi Shimbun does not immediately place apology advertisements before the international community, as it itself has long demanded of Japan, then it must be shut down without a moment’s delay.

Because of Asahi’s many fabricated reports, we were forced to pay as much as 30 trillion yen in taxpayers’ money to the Chinese Communist dictatorship.

That money was extracted from us for the benefit of people who, having obtained such enormous gains by exploiting Asahi, not only informed the public of nothing, but showed not the slightest hint of gratitude.

The clearest example of China’s current psychological warfare against Japan—aimed at dividing public opinion—is Okinawa. The words and actions of Onaga, brought into being by the two Okinawan newspapers that are little more than children of the Asahi Shimbun, and the way Asahi Shimbun and TV Asahi reported in support of Onaga, are truly chilling.

This essay continues.