China is in for yet another shock, delivered to it straight out of Japan. Under the leadership of its new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Japan is taking forward its campaign of stepping up pressure on China, while also insulating itself from Chinese spies. Kishida, who succeeded Yoshihide Suga, is an even more pronounced China hawk, and even before he took over the reins of Japan, he was breathing fire down Beijing’s neck. Reported earlier by TFI, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has created a new ministerial post for economic security in a bid to counter the brazen technology theft by China. Takayuki Kobayashi, who previously served as a vice minister for defense, has been appointed to the post. Additionally, Kishida is also considering appointing a prime ministerial advisor on the issue.
Japan’s Hunt Down of Chinese Student Spies:
Now, in a move which will cause China more pain, Japan will require permits for security-related technology transfers to international students in Japanese universities. According to a report by Nikkei Asia, universities will have to gain permission from the industry ministry when teaching critical technologies to foreign students staying in Japan for more than six months. The rule will apply to students who are under the influence of other countries, such as those who get more than 25 per cent of their income from foreign governments.
Japan’s industry ministry is looking to revise notices regarding the operations of the Foreign Exchange Act and implement them by 2022. The new rules will add more teeth to Japan’s campaign of ensuring that critical technologies belonging to it and its allies are not flown out of the country by China.
Reported by TFI earlier, Japan’s major universities including the ones having close ties to China were told to tighten background checks on foreign students involved in studying civil-military technologies. Last year, a pro-government newspaper in Japan, Yomiuri Shimbun, reported that Japan will tighten the inspection process in issuing visas, especially for Chinese students and researchers over espionage concerns.
Chinese Spies in Japan and Around the World:
Chinese students dominate the international community in Japanese universities. Of some 280,000 foreign students in Japan, 40 per cent belong to China. However, this could change soon, as Tokyo prepares to comprehensively weed out Chinese student spies and Intellectual Property (IP) thieves from its university campuses. Japan is not the first country to feel concerned about Chinese student spy networks. China runs a huge reverse engineering industry, which is fuelled by its student spy network. Beijing deliberately sends its students and scholars into other countries to carry out research on dual-use technologies with military applications.
China’s defence industry is almost totally powered by a system of students, scholars and spies breaking into the security systems of host nations and stealing critical information or intellectual property. The US, UK, Europe, Australia and even Russia have been victims of Chinese spy networks and IP theft.
According to the Nikkei Asia report, Japan also plans to revise the rules on disclosures by researchers, in fiscal year 2022. It would require researchers to report to their affiliated institutions, such as universities and companies, when they receive funding from external institutions.
China’s Candid Admission:
Recently, at the CCP’s blockbuster ‘Central Talent Work Conference’, Xi Jinping unknowingly ended up admitting to China’s intellectual property theft operations around the world. Jinping said, “It is essential to raise our awareness of unexpected situations and focus more on the cultivation of our own talents.” Did you notice the words “our own talents”?
Writing for the Epoch Times, researcher Zhong Yuan said that Xi’s statement inadvertently denies the achievements previously listed by him in talent-related work and points out that the development of China’s science and technology over the past few decades was based on stolen Intel alone.
Given how Xi Jinping himself admitted that China is fuelled by intellectual property theft from around the world, it makes complete sense for Japan to take a flurry of decisions aiming to secure and insulate itself from Chinese spies, while also weeding them out from the country for good. Not only is Japan targeting Chinese spies, countries from around the world have been taking steps to demolish the Chinese theft industry, and this has come to threaten the communist nation’s very future.