This piece links China’s “sharp power” influence operations, highlighted in an NHK program, with domestic opinion-shaping dynamics in Japan.
It argues the labor statistics controversy is not fundamentally about numbers but about extreme working conditions, while criticizing political and media actors who exploit the issue for government attacks.

2019-01-30.
For Asahi, NHK, and opposition political operators to criticize this is precisely the manifestation of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies,” and it is the most shameful wrongdoing.
Last night NHK rebroadcast the BS1 Special, “Silent ‘Invasion’ — Australia Shaken by New Chinese Immigrants.”
The following is from NHK’s article.
It is neither military intimidation nor hardline diplomacy.
It infiltrates every sphere of foreign society—politics, the economy, academia—and gradually injects “Chinese standards” into that society.
In recent years, China-watchers have begun calling this new force, distinct from “hard (military) power” and “soft (cultural) power,” “sharp power.”
The place where this trend is most conspicuous is Australia.
At the end of last year, a symbolic incident occurred.
A young rising star in politics, Senator Dastyari, who had been making statements favorable to China, was revealed to have received funding from a Chinese-affiliated company.
It sent shockwaves through Australian politics.
As a result, public wariness toward China surged within Australia.
Amid this situation, local elections were held in Tasmania in October.
In the state capital, Hobart, a female candidate emerged aiming to become the first Chinese-background council member.
She is Yongbei Tan, who has lived here for 20 years.
Using as her base the Chinese community, which has doubled over the past few years, she energetically appealed for support.
Her pledge was the development of Hobart as a hub base for Antarctica.
Meanwhile, Bill Harvey of the Greens also ran, seeking a fourth term as a city councilor.
Harvey warned citizens that behind Tan—who advocates developing the city as an Antarctic research hub—there may be the shadow of Beijing’s central authorities.
The program followed the local election in Tasmania, close to Antarctica.
It pointed its camera at the fierce struggle involving Chinese immigrants.
I happened to be watching this program, and the moment I became certain that Tan is unquestionably an agent of the Chinese Communist Party was when I saw the scene in which, after losing, she pressed an Australian woman—an acquaintance of hers who had been elected mayor of Hobart—about Antarctic policy.
It is a well-known fact that China has begun to bare limitless intentions of invasion and world domination—toward Antarctica, the Arctic, the Moon, and even outer space.
Those with discernment must have realized that Tan is a party cell in Australia embodying the will of the Chinese government.
Even so, China—the one-party dictators of the Communist Party—possess an endless ambition of evil that is not only boundless but also relentless.
At the very time China is launching rapid and wide-ranging operations against Japan in every field—especially in the field of data collection—opposition political operators, completely under the influence operations of China and the Korean Peninsula, have not a single one who expressed anger toward Moon Jae-in’s behavior.
Among the ministries in Kasumigaseki, the working environment is the worst.
Because Kasumigaseki runs the state, the sense of purpose is the highest, but the working style is beyond comparison with black companies.
Because they have the mission of running the nation, they are spared the kind of stress that comes from overtime pursued for private profit.
However, I only learned when this reporting began that the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is, within that already extreme Kasumigaseki, the ministry with the worst working conditions, but politicians and media people must have known it all along.
This problem became severe during the era of the utterly incompetent Democratic Party administration, manufactured by Asahi Shimbun.
They dumped work onto bureaucrats while cutting budgets to the bone.
And they did it as a show in front of TV cameras.
There was no lower party or administration than that.
Yet despite the well-known fact that, as a consequence, the Ministry’s problem deepened, opposition political operators, Asahi Shimbun, and other people—who earn substantial appearance fees on wide shows and who can be called “the lowest” without exaggeration—openly reveal themselves as proxies for China and the Korean Peninsula.
They not only divert the public’s eyes away from the problems of China and the Korean Peninsula, but also treat it as material for attacking the administration.
They brazenly ignore the fact that they themselves are criminals, and parade faces like Fukuyama and Tsujimoto.
If the same type of people—those 5 percent who control NHK’s reporting and editing—show no reflection for having stalled national politics and weakened Japan through the Moritomo-Kake uproar, and if they again begin attacking the administration by repeatedly broadcasting close-ups of Fukuyama and Tsujimoto, then the Japanese people must not remain silent.
All Japanese citizens should storm NHK, force those responsible to return in full the taxpayers’ money, and make them resign.
In the face of China’s ambitions and Moon Jae-in’s vile schemes, Japan has no time to allow proxy politicians, political fixers, and traitorous journalists to paralyze national politics.
The truth is that the Ministry’s issue was workers adopting practical measures to improve extreme working hours—life-threatening labor conditions—and it has absolutely nothing to do with statistics at all.
More importantly, newspapers such as Asahi Shimbun that continue the customary practice of oshigami—padding circulation to raise advertising rates—are committing outright fraud.
Television ratings based on rough surveys are of the same kind, and calling them fraudulent is not an exaggeration.
Newspapers that continue the evil of oshigami have absolutely no right to criticize Ministry officials who adopted, so to speak, an opinion-poll method to improve life-threatening labor conditions.
Furthermore, the government attacks they continue through so-called opinion polls conducted frequently by Asahi Shimbun and NHK keep inflicting incalculable damage on Japan.
They keep attacking the prime minister using events they themselves fabricated and reported into being, and they even include items such as “the prime minister’s character cannot be trusted” in their poll questions.
The time has come for all Japanese citizens, by that very phrase, to recognize that they are agents equivalent to traitors, acting in accordance with the intentions of China and the Korean Peninsula.
Those who wickedly work to weaken Prime Minister Abe and reduce the Japanese people’s trust in him are, in the world, only Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo Shimbun, Mainichi, certain employees of Nikkei, and China and the Korean Peninsula.
Moreover, these so-called opinion polls—until I raised criticism—were conducted on weekdays to landlines with only around 2,000 samples, yet the media kept using them as “correct numbers” to attack the administration.
Meanwhile, to break the daily chain of life-threatening overtime labor, non-career officials at the Ministry introduced only a tiny degree of probabilistic methods—opinion-poll style and election-forecast style—into research on a scale far beyond any opinion poll.
For Asahi, NHK, and opposition political operators to criticize something that in reality amounts to virtually no harm to the nation is precisely the expression of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies,” and the most shameful wrongdoing.
It is the ultimate evil of pseudo-moralism.
And a criminal such as Kiyomi Tsujimoto, who was arrested for falsifying secretary salaries—taxpayers’ money—has not the slightest qualification to speak arrogantly, let alone to criticize the administration.
To be continued.