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Yang Yi

【#1035】Japan Should Also Bust Secret Chinese Police Stations

Yang Yi ／ 2023.05.02 (Tue)


May 1, 2023

　
Two Chinese American men have recently been arrested for their alleged operation of a "secret police station” in New York City’s Chinatown to monitor Chinese residents in the United States. While applauding the good news, I recalled various things that happened to me over the past few years.

Harassment after book publication

Born in China and naturalized in Japan, I have come under harassment from China after the breakout of COVID-19 pandemic. As soon as a lockdown of China’s Wuhan where COVID-19 supposedly originated was reported, relevant video footage flooded the Internet, showing a group of protective gears who were forcefully confining foodless or very sick people, including elders and toddlers, in their houses under the “direction of authorities.” People crying on despair in the face of tyrannical power reminded me of my childhood when I suffered with my family political persecution.

My long-standing question that why ordinary people’s lives have to be tossed about by national politics came to my mind again and I could not but think about it. I then concluded that the misfortunes of Chinese people might have originated from the Chinese Communist Party’s dictatorship. I compiled my observations into a book titled “My Enemy, Xi Jinping” (published by Asuka Shinsha in June 2020).

Since then, my family members in China have been summoned and blackmailed by security police. I myself in Japan was also treated badly.

At first, a strange call asked me to go to the Chinese embassy to pick up a parcel arrived. Then, one-ring and silent phone calls began to come frequently. My mobile phone and personal computers went down very often due to communication failure or something else. My scheduled undertaking was cancelled by a Japanese publishing company. When going out, I was followed by suspicious vehicles. A woman who identified herself as in charge of public relations at the Chinese embassy made a number of calls to the publisher of my book, blaming the publication. Such mysterious incidents came one after another.

Branded as traitor insidiously

In the most shocking incident, an acquaintance of mine, with whom I had never talked about politics, made a phone call to me and started off by accusingly asking what evidence I had for writing that book. I asked her if she had read the book. She answered no. She and other members of a Chinese cultural group forming an association in Japan seemed to have held a meeting at a Chinese restaurant to criticize Yang Yi. After authoring a book critical of China in Japan, I was insidiously set up as a traitor of the Chinese Han race who committed a crime of subversion.

Chinese overseas police stations that have become controversial globally were reportedly found also in Japan, one in Tokyo’s Akihabara district and another in Fukuoka. If so, I want the Japanese government to act immediately. The Chinese Communist Party is a master of infiltration, exploring opportunities to send spies into foreign countries. Not a small number of private Chinese associations in Japan, especially some of those capped with “culture” or “economy,” undermine Japanese sovereignty behind the scenes while calling for Japan-China friendship loudly. I want the Japanese government to take relevant countermeasures promptly.

Yang Yi is a writer who has won a prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize.