A few weeks ago, an editor from China Daily, the English-language mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, reached out to me with a seemingly innocuous request: Would I be willing to write an opinion piece for them? I politely declined. My rationale was simple: Why lend the credibility of my affiliation with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute to a state-run propaganda organ?
My skepticism was swiftly vindicated. Shortly after my refusal, China Daily published an article that completely misrepresented my views about Japan’s defense spending increases. The piece, published last week, carried a sensational headline accusing Japan of using the guise of “revitalizing its defense industry” to achieve “remilitarization.”
To bolster this fabricated narrative, the publication blatantly misquoted me along with Hirohito Ogi, a respected scholar at Japan’s Institute of Geoeconomics. Without our permission, our nuanced analyses of Japan’s legitimate defense buildup in the face of a deteriorating regional security environment were twisted into a Chinese Communist Party talking point, complete with a cartoon depicting Japan as a menacing octopus dealing in arms sales.
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