This article is an English translation of Masayuki Takayama’s February 13, 2020 Shukan Shincho column, introduced and contextualized by the blogger.
Takayama traces how China and Maurice Strong used climate-change rhetoric and CO₂ emissions trading to siphon billions of yen from Japan, then examines a parallel “debt relief” scheme led by UK minister Clare Short and NGO Jubilee 2000 that forced Japan to forgive six trillion yen in loans while Britain reaped the political benefits.
He argues that the abolition of “tied aid” allowed China to dominate ODA-funded projects worldwide, effectively prospering on Japan’s money, and criticizes Shinjiro Koizumi’s shallow environmental posturing at COP25 and over Vietnamese coal power.
The column concludes that Japan must restore tied aid and revive nuclear power if it is to stop playing the fool in global climate and development politics.

The tide having turned against China, they tried putting forward the climate-change girl Greta Thunberg, but how effective has that been.
There was another case of this kind of international fraud in the same 1990s.

February 13, 2020

The following is from Masayuki Takayama’s regular column that graces the final page of the issue of Shukan Shincho released today.
A close friend of mine, one of the most avid readers I know, once said that he and I stand in a complementary relationship, and this piece proves how precisely that description hits the mark.
With the extraordinary skill that makes Masayuki Takayama the one and only journalist in the postwar world, he proves that I have been absolutely right in recent days to brandish PM2.5 pollution maps and criticize the United Nations, COP25, and Greta Thunberg.
People not only in Japan but around the world will surely marvel at how remarkable Takayama is.

They’re not stupid

China’s air is filthy.
It is full of soot, exhaust fumes, and that terrifying PM2.5.
But what is remarkable about the Chinese is that they wondered whether all that filth could somehow be turned into money.
So, as Wataru Watanabe recently wrote in the Sankei Shimbun, China “teamed up with the Canadian con man Maurice Strong.”
They first spread the theory that recent abnormal warm winters and other climate changes were caused by “excessively high CO₂ concentrations.”
The concentrations had risen “because advanced industrial nations such as Japan had been emitting CO₂ for decades,” and therefore, those countries must reduce emissions—or, if they cannot, they must buy CO₂ emission rights from developing countries.
But they declared that China, which currently emits the most CO₂, bears “no responsibility” because it is a “developing country.”
With China’s backing, Strong became chair of the Rio Earth Summit and used the United Nations’ name to spread his fraud worldwide.
Chinese NGOs acted as his hands and feet.
Japan, weak-kneed before the UN, fell for it completely and has been paying China 100 billion yen a year in the name of emission rights.
Recently, Strong’s true nature has been exposed, and voices in the biological sciences have warned that if CO₂ is reduced any further, the plants that depend on it for nourishment will die.
With the tide turning against them, China tried putting forward the climate-change girl Greta Thunberg, but how effective has that been.
There was another case of this kind of international fraud in the same 1990s.

The con artist was Clare Short, the British Secretary of State for International Development.
The victim was, once again, Japan.
The stage was the countries south of the Sahara, where HIV was then raging.
Patients seeking better treatment were flooding into their former colonial rulers, Britain and France.
The social medical systems of Britain and France were on the verge of collapse.
They wanted to push out the HIV refugees, but doing so outright would make them look inhuman.
Clare came up with an idea.
What if the “developed countries” canceled the yen loans and other official development debts owed by the Sub-Saharan nations.
Instead of repaying the money, those poor countries could build hospitals at home.
Then they would no longer need to undertake the arduous journey to Britain.
It was a beautiful story—except that Britain’s own aid was virtually zero.
The biggest aid donor, which had provided as much as one trillion dollars, was Japan.
If those debts were to be canceled, she should have bowed her head to Japan, but instead she declared, “Japan’s aid is all tied.
Japan is a heartless dinosaur that preys on the poorest countries.”
For the honor of Japan, let it be said that “tied aid” accounted for only about ten percent of the total and was limited to specialized fields like medical care.
Her accusation was nothing but a pretext, yet it was spread by the NGO “Jubilee 2000,” which Britain supported.
In Japan, the Tokyo Catholic Church and the Asahi Shimbun echoed Clare’s lies, preaching that Japan should “side with the weak.”
In the end, Japan abandoned a total of 600 billion yen in yen loans and other debts that were due for repayment in the ten years from 2003, and at the same time decided to abolish tied aid altogether.
Meanwhile, Britain used the debts that Japan had written off to build hospitals on the ground and played the role of the former colonial power “standing with the weak,” while also preventing medical refugees from coming.

Speaking of “standing with the weak,” Japan has Shinjiro Koizumi.
When he became environment minister, he immediately announced, in sympathy with Fukushima fishermen, that “we will not release tritium into the sea even if it is harmless.”
The fishermen receive their fishing rights for free.
The government could buy out those fishing rights, but that would cause friction—something he simply does not dare to do.
On top of that, at COP25 he allowed climate-change NGOs to humiliate Japan with their “Fossil of the Day” prize.
Could he not at least have said that China, the employer of those NGOs, was more deserving of that award.

No matter what he does, Shinjiro just cannot get it right.
The other day he loudly objected to Japan’s aid for the construction of a coal-fired power plant in Vietnam.
He merely tried to play the good boy, declaring that “exports of coal-fired power plants that emit CO₂ cannot be tolerated,” but he also voiced a naïve question: “Why are all the contracts going to China?”
In fact, after Japan abolished tied aid, China has been winning the lion’s share of the nearly one trillion yen in ODA projects that Japan provides every year.
Japan has poured several trillion yen of ODA into China itself, and on top of that has bought CO₂ emission rights from China.
With Japanese money, Chinese companies go abroad and implement development projects.
China’s prosperity has been blooming on top of Japan’s stupidity.
We have had more than enough of China.
If Japan would ponder the facts that Shinjiro inadvertently uncovered, revive tied aid, and bring back CO₂-free nuclear power, then no one would be able to call us “fools” ever again.