Originally posted on July 5, 2019.
Drawing on Keiko Kawazoe’s striking essay published in the August issue of WiLL, “Why Are Japan’s Television Courtesans Silent About the Two-Million-Person Hong Kong Protest?”, this piece lays bare the reality of Chinese Communist Party control over Hong Kong, the fear of the Xi Jinping regime, and the silence of Japan’s major media and left-leaning commentators.
Through the protests against the extradition bill, their continuity with the memory of Tiananmen, the surveillance structure surrounding Hong Kong society, the information operations of the Chinese Communist Party, and the strange reactions of Japanese media and leftist activists, it examines the true nature of the global struggle over freedom and democracy.

2019-07-05
The following is from a startling essay by the sharp nonfiction writer Keiko Kawazoe, published under the title, “Why Are Japan’s Television Courtesans Silent About the Two-Million-Person Hong Kong Protest?”

The following is from a startling essay by the sharp nonfiction writer Keiko Kawazoe, published in the August issue of WiLL under the title, “Why Are Japan’s Television Courtesans Silent About the Two-Million-Person Hong Kong Protest?”
What will Xi Jinping do? He cannot get away with it the way he did at the time of Tiananmen!
The Chief Executive is a “puppet.”
“If we do not act now, there is no tomorrow.”　
On June 9, a large-scale demonstration took place in Hong Kong.
Placards bore words filled with determination like these.
According to the organizers, 1.03 million people participated.
According to the police, the number was 240,000.
It became the largest demonstration since Hong Kong’s sovereignty was returned from Britain to China on July 1, 1997.　
The words “Oppose Extradition to China” written on the placards carried by the young people were a protest against the Hong Kong Legislative Council beginning deliberations on amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance that would make it possible to hand over suspects to mainland China.
If passed, the danger would rise that activists, journalists, lawyers, and even foreigners branded as “anti-regime” could have various reasons fabricated and be taken into custody and transported to China.　
In short, for writers like myself, not only mainland China but also Hong Kong would become a dangerous area, and it would no longer be a place where resident employees or foreign students could feel secure either.　
That is because even something as simple as posting on social media, for example, “Hong Kong, stay strong,” or “I hate the Chinese Communist Party,” would not carry a zero possibility of being marked.　
I even heard that during this demonstration, when a young person wrote, “You should exchange Hong Kong dollars for U.S. dollars,” a huge number of threatening messages arrived from people who seemed to be China’s internet police.　
Moreover, it seems that deposit accounts held by citizens at Chinese-affiliated banks can already no longer be immediately exchanged into U.S. dollars beyond a certain amount.　
In the autumn of 2014, when the Umbrella Revolution took place, one young person said, “China is a surveillance society. It seems that Hong Kong will become even more so. Many people feel suffocated and experience an invisible fear.”　
Even after that, exemplary arrests continued one after another, freedom and democracy retreated drastically, inequality continued to widen, and all aspects of daily life steadily worsened.
At a time when “one country, two systems” was in danger, and the legislature was pushing forward deliberations to revise the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, Hong Kong residents whose anger had reached the boiling point rose up.　
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, stated in an interview with a local television station on the 12th that “the amendment bill will not be withdrawn,” and denounced the demonstrations as “organized riotous conduct.”　
However, by the afternoon of the 15th, she was saying that “deliberations would be postponed,” wavering back and forth.
Why?　
Because although she is Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, she is a “puppet.”　
On the weekend of the 16th as well, another large-scale demonstration was carried out again in central Hong Kong.
The scale grew even further, and according to the organizers, nearly 2 million people, the largest number in Hong Kong’s history, rose up.
The police said 338,000.
Behind this unprecedented Hong Kong demonstration lies an internal life-and-death struggle and final showdown within the Chinese Communist Party.　
The details will be described later.
Xi Jinping is trembling with fear.　
On the 9th, when the demonstration broke out in Hong Kong, solidarity actions such as “anti-extradition” demonstrations and press conferences were also held in cities with many overseas Chinese and new Chinese immigrants, such as San Francisco and Los Angeles in the United States, London in Britain, Vancouver and Toronto in Canada, Melbourne in Australia, and Tokyo.　
Pro-China politicians and major media that have “multiplied” across the world ignored these developments, but it can be thought that a worldwide test has begun as to whether one supports “freedom and democracy” or wishes to remain China’s dog.　
China, meanwhile, suddenly plunged the internet space into communications disruptions so that the “demonstrations” would not spread to the people.　
Free Wi-Fi could not be used, social media became dysfunctional, and information was being extracted or disappearing.
This is seen as a measure taken by the public security authorities.　
In other words, the one trembling in fear over this situation is not so much the Hong Kong government on the spot, but the Xi Jinping regime, already driven to the limit by the U.S.-China trade war.　
Information has also leaked out that the seven top leaders, including President Xi, the members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, together with Vice President Wang Qishan, making eight people in all, held a closed-door meeting, and that retired elders among the former top leadership moved to Guangdong Province near Hong Kong.　
What must be rising in the minds of both the old and new highest Communist Party leaders is surely the “Tiananmen Incident” that occurred in Beijing on June 4, 1989, which they believe they had “concealed.”
Regarding the bloody catastrophe in which students pushing forward a democratic movement were crushed under armored vehicles of the People’s Liberation Army, British intelligence reportedly said that more than 20,000 people died and that a massacre was carried out.　
In this Hong Kong demonstration too, on the 12th the police fired many tear-gas canisters and rubber bullets into the demonstrators and sprayed them with pepper spray, and already many injuries have resulted.
But I do not think this will be enough to bring the emergency situation under control.　
Looking at social media originating in Hong Kong, along with photographs of police conducting body searches in subway stations, I saw warnings such as, “The People’s Liberation Army is wearing police uniforms, pretending to be police, and interrogating young people!” and “In Hong Kong people speak Cantonese, but I heard Mandarin conversations coming from the police!”　
There are also posts saying, “Armed police have been brought in from China. There is no mistake, because I can see an armed police officer I know!”　
Anti-Chinese Communist Party media reported from the very outset of the Hong Kong demonstrations that “the Southern Theater Command, headquartered in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, and the People’s Liberation Army in Hong Kong are standing by.”
There are spies among the demonstrators.　
On the same day the Hong Kong demonstrations broke out, I checked how much the major media had reported, though I ordinarily watch very little television, and found that Japanese television stations had not devoted proper time to reporting it.　
It is said that when NHK’s overseas television broadcasting transmitted news related to the Hong Kong demonstrations, both the picture and sound were cut off and the screen went black.
This has, for decades, been an artificially engineered “broadcasting accident,” that is, news censorship, imposed by the Chinese Communist Party, but why does Japan’s public broadcaster continue to shrink back there?　
If they are disliked by China, they cannot get promoted, overseas bureaus may be shut down, and so they run toward self-preservation and continue the vicious cycle of obeying the dictatorship, that is, the Chinese Communist Party.
If that is the case, then NHK should collect its viewing fees not from the Japanese people but from the roughly 90 million Chinese Communist Party members.　
Furthermore, left-wing politicians and television courtesans, that is, fake commentators specializing in television, who ordinarily string together ornate phrases such as “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy,” also either remain silent or absolutely refuse to make statements likely to displease China.　
The true meaning of the “Hong Kong demonstrations” is a “No” to the Chinese Communist Party government, which has broken its promise to Britain and hollowed out the “one country, two systems” arrangement.
And going further, the Western countries are now heading into a final showdown, using “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy” as their cards, in the direction of bringing down China’s dictatorship, which is destroying the order of the world.　
What stunned me was that newspapers such as the Mainichi Shimbun once again spotlighted young Japanese people who gathered in Shibuya to support the Hong Kong demonstrations, including former members of SEALDs.
At the center of them stood Jinshiro Motoyama, the representative of the “Henoko Referendum Association.”
He was the graduate student, perhaps on leave, who had led the hunger strike before the February Okinawa prefectural referendum on base relocation.　
“Since Representative Jinshiro Motoyama began his hunger strike in front of Ginowan City Hall, pressure from supporters demanding implementation throughout the prefecture intensified further, and moves to seek a political solution, such as the prefectural headquarters of Komeito urging the ruling side toward compromise, emerged all at once.
Public dissatisfaction rises.
A compromise proposal suddenly emerges at the brink.”
From the Japanese Communist Party’s Twitter, January 20.　
As this tweet makes clear, Motoyama has been treated like a hero by the Japanese Communist Party and by the Akahata newspaper.
Okinawan conservatives had said that the “Henoko Referendum Association,” led by Motoyama, was a dummy organization of the Communist Party, and yet such a hard-core left-wing activist is “supporting” Hong Kong people rising up for “freedom and democracy” and “anti-Communism”…
Do decent citizens feel no sense of incongruity at such a surreal article?　
“The citizens of Hong Kong fear suppression by the authorities, and they are especially worried about the safety of the young people on the front lines of the protests.
But the people of Hong Kong no longer have any other option.
They all think that even if they must become sacrifices for freedom, so be it.”　
This was written in anti-Communist media, but it should be the unvarnished feeling of Hong Kong residents who are “not members of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Where on earth has journalism disappeared to?　
As for China’s state-controlled media, even Chinese living overseas laugh bitterly at it.
For a while after the demonstrations broke out they remained “quiet,” but when they finally reported, they substituted the facts and said, “Because part of the demonstration turned violent, the Hong Kong police suppressed it.”　
In addition, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a press conference on the 10th that “800,000 Hong Kong citizens participated in a signature campaign supporting the amendment bill,” and the party-controlled English-language media outlet China Daily echoed this by saying, “800,000 people gathered in Hong Kong support the amendment to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance.”　
According to a reporter for The Epoch Times, posts first calling on people online to participate in this signature campaign were carefully spread together with links.
This is thought to have been the work of the internet police, the hands and feet of the Chinese Communist Party.
Moreover, one person could sign any number of times, and it is said that even when the name entered was not merely a false name but “ABCD,” and the identification number was entered as “1234,” the signature was accepted.　
Now then, it is said that many of the participants in the Hong Kong demonstrations purchased tickets in cash rather than using the Octopus card, the transportation card they ordinarily use for the subway and similar travel.
A cashless society is a surveillance society.
Because it reveals who moved where and when.
And at the front lines of the demonstrations, faces were covered with gas masks and goggles.　
However, mixed in among the vast majority of genuine demonstrators, spies of the Chinese Communist Party are keeping watch.
Thirty years ago in June, even before the Tiananmen Incident, there were gatherings calling for democratization not only in Beijing but also in Japan.
After that, the lives of young Chinese people, who are now mainly in their fifties, clearly split into light and darkness.　
The operatives who pretended to participate in pro-democracy demonstrations while actually being on the side monitoring the students rose in status through informing on them.
Some even went on to graduate school at state expense.
I also know that among those who fled to the United States or Australia after participating in the demonstrations, there are some who made deals with the Chinese authorities and became operatives, or else walked the road of getting rich as investors and the like.
We must not forget that the surveillance by the enemy, the Chinese Communist Party, has in recent years been strengthened even more, in both cyberspace and the analog world alike.

To be continued.