A Gift Rendered Meaningless by Wisdom: Lessons from Mongolian Folklore and the True Nature of China's Belt and Road
August 3, 2018
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as previously discussed, is not merely a modern geopolitical strategy, but a continuation of China’s ancient imperial mindset. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was created as a financial institution to support this initiative. At the time, I publicly declared that while many European countries rushed to join, Japan should categorically abstain—and now, evidence of the correctness of that stance is surfacing everywhere.
To the people of neighboring countries entangled in China’s ambitions, I ask this: Have you forgotten the wisdom and struggles of your ancestors?
Last year, I had the opportunity to read a thick scholarly volume that collected Mongolian folktales. Throughout, the term "duplicitous China" appeared repeatedly, underscoring the long-standing perception of Chinese cunning. Indeed, one could say the BRI is identical in spirit to the schemes of ancient Chinese dynasties.
In these stories, the Chinese emperor would send a “gift” to a neighboring country. How that nation responded could mean the difference between survival and subjugation.
In one tale, the Mongolian king, faced with such a gift, summoned the wisest minds in the land to devise a response. Yet the greatest among them, a man once held in highest esteem, had been slandered and forced to resign—similar to how Sugawara no Michizane was treated in Japan. Ultimately, the king realized no one could match this man’s intellect and entrusted him with the task of responding to China's veiled threat.
This man then issued a royal decree, searching for a man capable of eating an entire sheep by himself—a glutton. Upon finding such a man, he took him along on a mission to meet the Chinese emperor.
As I read this tale, I was struck by how different these cultures are from Japan, particularly in how comfortably they wield falsehood. In the imperial court, this wise man engaged in a brilliant game of wits, so thoroughly impressing the emperor that the latter was forced to concede: the gift—intended as a diplomatic trap to reduce Mongolia to a tributary state—was rendered meaningless. The emperor, recognizing that a nation capable of producing such wisdom could not be easily subdued, abandoned his plans for invasion.
Countries like Sri Lanka and Cambodia must have survived as nations and peoples precisely because they navigated through centuries of similarly cunning Chinese strategies. To now forget their ancestors' sacrifices and histories, to chase quick money and fall for China's duplicitous schemes—how would their forebears feel watching this unfold?
As for Japan, I had long since canceled my subscription to the Asahi Shimbun, but it was Takayama Masayuki who informed me that their China correspondent, Keiko Yoshioka, had been persistently advocating for Japan’s immediate entry into the AIIB and participation in the Belt and Road Initiative.
Incredibly, she even praised the AIIB’s first president, Jin Liqun, calling him a “well-rounded gentleman.” But as Takayama sharply retorted, has she no idea that con artists have historically used such polished appearances to deceive?
It is no exaggeration to say that Yoshioka, too, may well be under the influence of the Chinese Communist Party's extensive propaganda machine—whether via a money trap, a honey trap, or another method of subversion. One cannot help but wonder whether her pro-China and anti-Japan stance has gone so far that, in essence, she has become indistinguishable from a Chinese citizen herself.
