In August 2016, Chinese government vessels and approximately 230 fishing boats entered waters near the Senkaku Islands.
This essay exposes China’s contempt for international law, the hypocrisy of the global order, and the profound ignorance of Western commentators who disparage Japan’s democracy.

2016-08-06

A truly foolish man once declared that Japan, the world’s greatest democracy, possesses the worst democratic politics among advanced nations.
Today, a friend who was helping me with my work muttered while watching news circulating on the internet.
“What on earth are they thinking? Is this supposed to be some kind of old-style war?”

Wondering what he meant, I looked at the screen.
It read:
“230 Chinese vessels near the Senkaku Islands… intrusion into the contiguous zone, government lodges protest.”

Checking the Mainichi Shimbun article online, it stated:

On the morning of the 6th, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that six vessels of the China Coast Guard had entered the contiguous zone surrounding the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture.
Approximately 230 Chinese fishing boats were also confirmed in the surrounding area.

The intrusion into the contiguous zone was confirmed shortly after 8 a.m.
Kenji Kanesugi, Director-General of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, demanded that a minister-counselor at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo withdraw the vessels from the contiguous zone and refrain from entering Japan’s territorial waters.
He strongly protested, stating that this was a unilateral escalation of the situation that further heightens tensions at the scene and is absolutely unacceptable.
Japan’s embassy in Beijing also lodged a protest with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On the 5th, China Coast Guard vessels accompanying Chinese fishing boats entered Japan’s territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands.
According to the Japan Coast Guard, two government vessels entered the territorial waters a total of three times between 12:15 p.m. and 3:45 p.m. on the 5th.

China, which ignores the ruling issued by the international court against its high-handed behavior in the South China Sea,
and which engages in such actions around the Senkaku Islands,
has, since the postwar period, been a permanent member of the United Nations possessing veto power.

There is no fact that more clearly proves the hypocrisy of the international community than this.

Those such as
Martin Fackler,
the former Tokyo bureau chief of
The New York Times,
who derided Japan—the world’s greatest democracy—as having the worst democratic politics among advanced nations,
must first recognize their own ignorance, vulgarity, and folly,
and learn to feel shame.

Each time China commits acts such as these,
the Japanese people should reduce the subscription numbers of
朝日新聞
by units of one million from the current figure of 4.6 million households.

In fact, doing so delivers the most powerful blow to the one-party dictators of the Chinese Communist Party.

To inflict the maximum blow on those people—
who embody “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies,” compounded by the evil of one-party communist dictatorship—
driving the Asahi Shimbun straight into abolition would cause the Chinese Communist Party’s dictators, for the first time,
to understand the true will of the Japanese people.

To be continued.