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Japanese Nationalists Are Backing The Hong Kong Protestors To Weaken China And Enable A War Between China And Japan

By on August 7, 2019 in Featured, General, Highlight

By Theodore Shoebat

Hong Kong has been in a state of civil unrest, as protestors riot out of fear that China is expanding her hegemony over their autonomous region. The protestors are enraged by a proposed law that would allow for criminals hiding in Hong Kong to be extradited to mainland China where they are wanted for crimes. The protestors see this as a cover for a real agenda of despotism. China has been currently under the axiom of “One country, two systems,” but the protestors fear that Beijing wants to make China under a single system, thus removing Hong Kong’s autonomy. Yang Guang, a spokesman for the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council, warned the opposition in Hong Kong that “those who play with fire will perish by it.” He affirmed that China has “tremendous power” to squash the protests and warned that anyone who engages in “violence and crimes … will be held accountable.”

When he was asked if he had ruled out the possibility of using the Chinese military on the Hong Kong protestors, Guang replied: “We will not let any acts attacking the principle of ‘one country, two systems’ go unpunished. …I warn all those criminals: Don’t misjudge the situation or take restraint as a sign of weakness.” Guang also said that the protests jeopardize Hong Kong’s stability and that they were pushing the autonomous territory into “the abyss”:

“[The] radical protests … have severely impacted Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability, pushing it into a dangerous abyss”

Yang Guang. Image from the Standard

Certain Hong Kong protestors want a revolution against Beijing. Protestors in front of the Liaison Office on August 4 of 2019 shouted: “Recovering Hong Kong, the revolution of the times!” The originator of this slogan was one Edward Leung. He was described by a man named Zheng in an interview with AFP as a religious guru: “It can be said that he is a spiritual leader.” Leung was in fact sentenced to jail time for rioting.

The rift between Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese people has come from even linguistic tensions. Since 1997, about 1 million mainland Chinese migrated to Hong Kong. 15% to 18% of students in Hong Kong are mainlanders, and many students have stayed in the territory after graduation, thus entering the strong competition with locals for jobs. Hong Kongers speak Cantonese, while mainland Chinese people speak Mandarine. More and more the Mandarin language is being seen in films, street signs, buildings and schools, which is exasperating the prejudices of many people in Hong Kong who deem mainlanders with the pejorative of “locusts.” 

Hong Kong is a hub for Western finance, and thus is the wealthiest region in China, which means that Beijing cannot afford to lose control over the region. If China loses Hong Kong, then her entire economy will collapse. The chaos in Hong Hong is occurring in the midst of countries who want to see China breakdown, like the United States and Japan. Hong Kong’s greatest fear is China taking full control over her, while China’s biggest fear is losing Hong Kong (its economic powerhouse). Hong Kong is extremely wealthy, the city holding trillions in fiscal reserves and in 2018 her total wealth topped 31.5 trillion (the city has more multimillionaires than New York City). Thus, if Hong Kong leaves, China is ruined. Such a fate would be to the ravenous interest of other countries like Japan and the US. Moreover, if, lets say, China uses its military to squash the protests, it will spark international outrage that could then be used later to justify a military intervention by a country like Japan. Thus, it is not far-fetch to observe that the riots are being supported by outside forces. This is what we are going to inquire briefly in this article.

It is very interesting to note that two Hong Kong activists, Ray Wong and Alan Li — members of the nativist organization, Hong Kong Indigenous — fled Hong Kong after being indicted for organizing a riot in 2016 in Mong Kok, and gained asylum in Germany in May of 2018. In June of 2019, the German Green Party organized an event commemorating the Tiananmen Square protest, and both activists, Ray Wong and Alan Li, spoke in the conference.  Speaking alongside with Alan Li and Ray Wong was Kristin Shi-Kupfer of the Mercator Institute for China Studies, which was created by the Stiftung Mercator, one of the wealthiest organizations in all of Germany, an indication that there are very wealthy entities backing the Hong Kong independence movement.   

Kristin Shi-Kupfer

 

Ray Wong (left) and Alan Li

Support is also (not surprisingly) coming from Japan. For example in June of 2019, Shinzo Abe expressed his backing not only for the Hong Kong resistance against the extradition bill, but for the Muslim Uyghur people of the Xinjiang region of northwest China.

Shinzo Abe with Xi Jinping, in the G20 summit in Osaka where Abe expressed support for the Hong Kong protestors

Takeshi Osuga, Japan’s foreign press secretary and official spokesman for the G20 conference, stated that Abe had brought up the issue of Hong Kong and also the situation of the autonomous territory in northwest China, Xinjiang, during a meeting Thursday with China’s president, Xi Jinping. “The prime minister pointed out the importance of [maintaining] a free, open and prosperous Hong Kong under the ‘one country, two systems, formula with the recent extradition bill situation in mind,” Osuga said.

Hong Kong separatists thanked Abe. For example, Andy Chan Ho-tin, a pro-independence activist and founding member of the Hong Kong National Party, said at a press conference in Osaka that he was “grateful” for Abe directly telling Xi about Japan’s ‘concern’ about China’s human rights violations. While in Osaka, Chan attended a rally and the press conference, both of which were organized by the Free Indo-Pacific Alliance (FIPA), an organization that wants independence for several regions currently a part of China, such as Taiwan, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Essentially, it wants China as we know it today to be broken up and fragmented.

The president of FIPA is Rebiya Kadeer, the main face of the Uyghur separatist movement that wants Uyghur independence from China. FIPA has two offices: one in Washington and the other in Tokyo.

An organization that is ran by an Uyghur nationalist (for a movement historically known to be backed the US) is giving a voice for the Hong Kong separatists, and it just so happens that its headquartered in Washington DC and Tokyo, the two biggest governments in anti-Chinese policy. This is no coincidence.

Looking at its DC address, their office is smack right next to the Whitehouse. And the fact that FIPA’s second main office is in Tokyo is, I don’t think, coincidental. Also, that the leader of FIPA is an Uyghur pushing for Xinjiang independence from China should not be overlooked. We know for a fact that the CIA has a history of backing Uyghur separatists like Erkin Alptekin. Japan also backs the Uyghur cause, but for its own anti-Chinese agenda. Rebiya Kadeer’s visit to Osaka for FIPA where she collaborated with Hong Kong separatists, was facilitated by the Japanese government. A report from the Japan Times states:

“Japanese government sources have confirmed Tokyo issued a visa to Kadeer, despite calls not to do so from Beijing. She plans to protest human rights violations by the Chinese government during her stay, which will coincide with President Xi Jinping’s visit to Osaka for the summit. … Former president of the World Uyghur Congress and current president of the Free Indo-Pacific Alliance, a group that represents exiled minorities including Tibetans, Kadeer herself fled China after being labeled a separatist, and now lives in the United States.”

The Global Times also published an article in 2012 about how the Japanese government is facilitating the entry of Uyghur separatists (terrorists in China) into Japan:

“The World Uyghur Congress (WUC), a separatist group that China claims has close relations to terrorist organizations, opened a conference in Tokyo yesterday, with China expressing strong dissatisfaction with Japan for allowing the group to engage in separatist activities, regardless of China’s objection.”

So what we have here is an organization (FIPA) that is ran by an Uyghur nationalist leader backed by the Japanese government for her anti-China separatism, with offices in DC and Tokyo, that is collaborating with Hong Kong separatists. The story is even more interesting when you look at FIPA’s ties with Japanese nationalism. The vice-president of FIPA is Hidetoshi Ishii, a Japanese nationalism who is working to revive militarism against China.

 

Hidetoshi Ishii’s Twitter account

Ishii is the husband of a popular Japanese ultra-nationalist named Yoko Ishii, and he regularly appears on her Youtube channel and tweets her material. In other words, the vice-president of FIPA — the organization that hosted Hong Kong separatists — is a Japanese jingoist. Just to show you how violently nationalistic these activists are, on April 15th of 2019, Ishii shared a post from Yoko praising the Japanese Kamikazes:

The tweet is a link to a video by Yoko in which she reads a poem written in honor of certain Kamikazes or the “301 heroes from Fukuoka Prefecture” (as we read from an article posted by Yoko underneath her video). Yoko reads the poem, the ending lines of which are:

“Refusing the feelings of all feelings,

Your short life is over with blood emerald sentences

…

You are a Kamikaze fighter,

The proud man who ran through the southwest of Showa [the Emperor]

Ah, you’re dead

You will continue to fly in the blue sky of paradise now”

(for the video above, set the CC to English)

In August of 2017, Yuko interviewed her husband, Mr. Ishii, for the Right-wing magazine, Sankei Shimbun (JAPAN Forward) on Hong Kong’s resistance against China. In the interview, Ishii essentially said that Hong Kongers need to stop talking about how the Japanese military mass raped people in the Second World War because it is “alienating” Japan which is, to him, the biggest ally to anti-Chinese resistance. Ishii condemned the fact that Hong Kong erected a memorial for “comfort women” or women who were forced to be sex slaves for Japanese imperial soldiers:

“Japanese conservatives stand alone in confronting Beijing. And yet, some Pan-Democrats in Hong Kong recently built a comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese consulate there. In effect, the Hong Kong Pan-Democrats are alienating their only real friends in Japan. In mistaking their allies for their enemies, they are only weakening themselves while emboldening their CCP [Chinese Communist Party] oppressors.”

Ishii expressing objection to the comfort women memorial is not surprising, given the fact that back in 2013 his wife, Yoko, made a song mocking the historical realities of sex slavery by the Japanese imperial military:

She also made another song praising the Yasukuni shrine (where Japanese war criminals are worshipped as gods) and mocked those who objected to it:

So what we see here is an organization (FIPA, or Free Indo-Pacific Alliance) backing Hong Kong separatists and other peoples in Asia who want to fragment China and make their own states, ran by a Japanese nationalist, Hidetoshi Ishii, who, alongside his wife, revere the Kamikazes and believe in Japanese militarism.   

(Circled): Hong Kong separatist Andy Chan Ho-tin, with Hidetoshi Ishii and his wife Yoko, in the FIPA rally in Osaka

Ishii, in the conversation with his wife, affirms that Japan is the most powerful nation in Asia, and thus must see Hong Kong as the frontline in a struggle for domination against China. He also adds that Japan must have the military capability to attack her “enemies”:

“I see Hong Kong as the front line of our battle against the CCP in Asia. If we’re able to protect Hong Kong now, then there’s hope that we can push back the situation in Tibet, Uyghur, and South Mongolia.”

When asked by his wife, “What do you think Japan should do as a leader in Asia?” Ishii replies by saying:

“I think the biggest obstacle is the lack of self-awareness among the Japanese that we’re a leader of Asia in the first place. We can’t achieve anything if the Japanese don’t even have any will to begin with.

With that in mind, what I think is needed for Japan is to have the capability to attack our enemies. In Japan, the debate about North Korea’s extremely reckless missile launches has finally started to include questions about whether it’s time for Japan to be able to fight back if provoked.”

Alongside pushing for Japanese militarist revival, Ishii also talked about a “greater Asia project” led by Japan. What is really occurring here is Japan wants to remove China as its main competitor for control over Asia. Instead of China being the imperialist, Japan wants to be the imperial empire, but for now she is marketing this aspiration as a “greater Asia” project or as an “independent Asia”, when the reality is that the true enterprise is a Japanese empire with the rest of Asia as her footstool. In the interview Yoko asks her spouse, “What is the ‘dream’ of ‘greater Asia’”? to which he explains:

“Before World War II, Asia was almost completely colonized by the West. The only two exceptions were Thailand and Japan. Many of our ancestors in Japan took action with others in Asia to reverse this trend. This is part of our history.

However, resistance to colonialism is not just for history books. We need to be aware that the fight continues even today.

Asia is now being steadily colonized again, not by the West, but by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The military power of Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army threatens everyone in Asia.”

When he brings up his Japanese ancestors reversing European imperialism, he is actually referring to the Japanese war machine of expansionism that left an ocean of blood in Asia. Japanese nationalists love to elevate the Japanese imperial army as a force against European imperialism, and they will even go so far as to boast that Japan sacrificed herself for the freedom of all of Asia in World War Two (since at the end of WW2 European imperialism in Asia began to seriously decline). In fact, the idea that Japan invaded China to righteously fight Communism was a common belief during the Second World War. This belief was reflected by the Buddhist scholar and priest, Hitane Jozan, who wrote in October of 1937:

“Speaking from the point of view of the ideal outcome, this is a righteous and moral war of self-sacrifice in which we will rescue China from the dangers of Communist takeover and economic slavery.” (Hitane, The Current Incident and the Vow and practice of a Bodhisattva. In Victoria, Zen at War, ch. 9, p. 134)

Japanese nationalists like Ishii are still portraying Japan as the main protector and citadel of all Asia. In the end of the interview with his wife, Ishii affirms:

“Japan needs to be the fortress of freedom, human rights, democracy, and true peace in Asia. It’s to fight this good fight that I’m active inside of Japan to change our politics while teaming up with politicians, activists, and experts overseas.

“Freedom and Independence for Asia”—this is my motto, but it can’t remain just a dream. There is too much at stake if we fail to make freedom and independence from CCP brutality a reality in all of Asia.”

But this is merely a cover for the real agenda of conquest and empire. If this was not the case, then Yuko and her ilk would not be praising Kamikazes and the Japanese military as a force against “imperialism.”

During FIPA’s conference with Hong Kong separatists, the separatist leader,  Andy Chan Ho-tin, met with Ishii and told him: “We are brothers for life, aren’t we? If I go to prison, don’t forget me.”

In July of 2019 Yoko wrote an article about this conference in which she talked about unity between Muslim Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian and Hong Kong separatists:

A phrase spray painted on the wall of Hong Kong’s LegCo reads, ”China will pay for its crimes against Uighur Muslims.” The message was written by protesters during the occupation as a clear message from Hong Kongers to Uyghurs. Growing solidarity of oppressed Asians is expanding.  …

I was involved in the protests against China in Osaka during June G-20 meetings, named “Justice 20 (J20) Executive committee.” The meaning was derived from the twenty points of injustice.

The FIPA anchored in the center, then, the crowds of people seeking release from Chinese oppression in the region came to form a new organization which became J20. It grew bigger as it has never happened before.

There are a few reasons behind this.

The charisma of J20 Executive Committee advisor and the FIPA president Ms. Rebiya Kadeer, often referred to as the mother of the Uyghurs is one. The mother of the Uyghurs stands in the center among Uyghurs around the world and even other ethnic groups know her name.

A review of the partner organizations listed revealed wide ranging support, including Tibetans, Uyghurs, Southern Mongolians, Taiwanese, South Koreans, Vietnamese, democracy-seeking Chinese and Japanese. Chinese government officials in charge of keeping an eye on  so-called “ethnic minorities” must have been astonished to see the solidarity.

…

The picture of protesters in Osaka was historical. Five student union flags were held up next to the flags of Tibet, Uyghurs and Southern Mongolians. It was the very first time these flags were aligned together.

This time, through the J20, Young Hong Kongers stepped out onto a bigger stage and gained new experience by flying overseas and cooperating with other ethnic groups to raise their voices. They garnered the attention of the international media and were praised by Ms. Rebiya Kadeer, as well as people from Tibet, Southern Mongolia and Chinese seeking democracy.”

Grafitti in Hong Kong protesters, showing solidarity with Uyghur Muslims. Notice its in English, not Cantonese or Mandarin.

China does share a huge amount of the blame for this. Human rights abuses, putting Muslims and others in concentration camps, murdering Christians and destroying churches — China has an immense record and has come to the point where no one in Asia likes him. With all of this anger on the brink of geopolitical explosion, it is not surprising to see so many nations living in China — Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, Mongolians, etc. — working with outside countries like Japan to break free and start their own independent countries. But, what will the end result be?

If China diminishes to a condition of tremendous weakness, then she will be open to an invasion by outsiders. Which country in Asia is just waiting for this opportunity? Japan. Being the most powerful nation in Asia — especially on account of American support — Japan cannot afford a rising China and thus is using the animosity of other peoples living under Beijing to breakdown the Chinese government.

One thing we need to keep in mind when observing all of this is that there are no good sides in this political quagmire. The United States is using Japan as its attack dog against China; while people may think that this is great, they do not think about what could happen when this dog is unleashed. Japan is acting as an American ally while she pursues her own militarist agenda. Japan is anti-China and this appeases American sentiments, but for what reason? Japan obviously is not against China for the sake of American interest, but for her own interest of dominating Asia. In order to dominate Asia, Japan has to eclipse China. What better way to diminish China than to sever her from Hong Kong? Hong Kong is the wealthiest region in China; remove Hong Kong and you will devastate China. Supporting Hong Kong has nothing to do with “human rights,” but everything to do with power.

  

  

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