China’s Sharp Power in Japan: Corruption Political scandals involving China are rare in Japan. Such occurrences are so unusual thata well-regarded 2018 book on the history of Japanese political scandals only mentions“China” twice, and the country’s name does not even appear in the index (Russia is alsonot mentioned).65 The author of that book, Matthew Carlson, told us, “The illegal side ofChina’s influence is hard to spot in Japan,” and corruption in Japan in general has decreased significantly since the 1980s and 1990s due to public scrutiny and the capacity ofthe government to hide scandals. One such scandal did occur in 2012 when Justice Minister Keishuu Tanaka resigned fromthe Noda administration after it was revealed Tanaka had political ties to the Yakuza and hadaccepted funds from a Chinese national. However, Tanaka and his staff were likely unawareof the Chinese ties because it was not an issue of concern until he became justice minister,and the LDP used the scandal against the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
Yet, the Chinese government’s connection to a recent bribery scandal involving LDP politician Tsukasa Akimoto, who was a key official in crafting Japan’s new integrated resortsdevelopment strategy, threatened to harm the Japan-China relationship. It also taints theimage of an already-controversial Japanese economic growth strategy: the promotion ofcasino properties, or so-called “integrated resorts.” Notably, the Japanese public has been aswary of the growth of a domestic gaming industry as it has of a rising China.
The legalization of enhanced casinos (“integrated resorts”) has been a key part of the “Abenomics” economic policy of Prime Minister Abe, who assumed office in December 2012 and has since become the longest-serving prime minister in Japan’s post-WWII history. Abe initially proposed legalizing casinos under his “Third Arrow” growth strategy,which was approved by the cabinet in June 2014. Abe sought to legalize casinos duringa special 2014 Diet session in order to boost tourism before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics,66and three cities were selected for casino openings by 2020.67The legislation kept gettingpostponed, however, in part due to a snap election in November 2014, and in 2015 theDiet remained focused on passing legislation to allow Japan to exercise collective selfdefense.68The LDP’s coalition ally, the Buddhism-influenced Komeito Party, had beenstrongly opposed to casino gambling on moral grounds, although Komeito is also friendlyto China due to its pacifist ideology.69
Public opinion has been divided on the issue of casinos, with an October 2019 survey byJiji showing 60 percent in opposition.70Meanwhile, legislation to lift the ban on casinoswas not passed until December 2016, when Akimoto was chairing the Diet’s Lower HouseCabinet Committee.71Another snap election in September 2017 delayed the Diet’s passageof the integrated resorts implementation bill until July 2018.72 Komeito then changed its position in support of the bill, explaining that they had an obligation to implementegislation that had been passed democratically (at the time, Komeito member KeiichiIshii was the minister of land, which is the principle regulator for integrated resorts).73
Akimoto belongs to the LDP’s powerful Nikai faction (named for LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai of Wakayama Prefecture), which is the LDP’s pro-China group.74,75This group is also referred to as the “Nikai-Imai faction.” Takaya Imai, a senior adviser to Abe and former METI bureaucrat, has persuaded the prime minister to take a softer approach toward China and its infrastructure projects on business grounds.76 Nikai, who has brought five pandas from China to a zoo in his hometown Wakayama, served as the prime minister’s special envoy to China to meet Xi Jinping in April 2019 and advocated for Japan’s cooperation on the BRI, regardless of the United States’ opinion.77He has also advocated for Xi’s state visit to Japan.7
In December 2019, Akimoto was arrested for allegedly receiving a total of 3.7 million yen ($33,000) in bribes from China’s leading online sports gambling service provider, 500. com.79The site has a Chinese government-backed chipmaker, Tsinghua Unigroup, as its major shareholder.80 Tsinghua Holdings owns a 51 percent stake in Tsinghua Unigroup and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the public Tsinghua University, which educated Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao. Hu’s son Hu Haifeng was party secretary of the group. Tsinghua Unigroup has steadily increased its stake after 500.com reported its first quarterly loss in November 2013. As the company’s losses continued, 500.com has tried to find alternative revenue sources outside of China, including in Japan. A month after 500.com established its Japanese subsidiary in July 2017, 500.com hosted a symposium in Okinawa to discuss casino business opportunities.81 Akimoto also was invited as a keynote speakerand received an enhanced speaker’s fee of 2 million yen, thanks to his government appointment.82 Such China-linked bribery scandals are rarely reported in Japan, but if the two countries continue to grow increasingly interconnected, the chances for a repeat of another corruption case could rise.
China’s “Hostage Diplomacy” In addition to corruption, another example of malign Chinese influence in Japan involves coercion. In September 2019, Nobu Iwatani, a respected China scholar and professor at Hokkaido University, which is one of Japan’s top national schools, was detained under the 2014 anti-espionage law while attending a conference in Beijing. Iwatani was released in November 2019 after reportedly confessing to collecting a large amount of “classified information,” but his arrest had already damaged the ChinaJapan relationship.83A group of 130 Japanese academics who specialize in China signed an open letter drafted by the normally-sympathetic Japanese Association of Scholars Advocating Renewal of the Japan-China Relationship demanding that China explain its actions. They argued that the arrest damaged trust between the two nations and was a shock “beyond words.”84 Since Iwatani’s arrest, many Japanese scholars have canceled research trips to China.85 Since 2015, at least 13 Japanese citizens have been detained in China on various charges, including espionage. But this case was particularly acute for several reasons. First, Iwatani was in Beijing at the invitation of the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a well-known research institution affiliated with China’s State Council. Iwatani was staying at facilities provided to him by CASS, raising questions about how it came to be known that he was collecting information and what exactly constitutes “state secrets,” given that he is a historian who was conducting research.86 Several experts described the episode as a Chinese “influence operation” that is, once again, having a negative effect upon Japanese sentiment. The message China is sending to Japan, they told us, was: “We may have a bilateral détente, but we can still do whatever we want,” with some labeling it as “hostage diplomacy.” In a twist, citing the 2014 anti-espionage law, China in the summer of 2019 detained a Chinese professor based at the Hokkaido University of Education while he was visiting his hometown in Jilin Province, China.
An acquaintance in Hokkaido believed his arrest may be tied to his links to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, suggesting the law is used for political censorship.87
