The prime minister Beijing hates most is slipping in the polls; how much is due to China

The prime minister of Japan is Sanae Takaichi.  She took office in October 2025, pledging more spending on defense, missile deployments, and a new intelligence agency.  And since then, to no one's surprise, the Chinese communist party has waged a huge propaganda war against her.  

Of course "propaganda" is such a negative term, comrade!  Relic of the cold war and such.  So the "cool kids" have replaced it with a term less...loaded: “cognitive warfare.”  The Chinese communist party has spent months writing articles to make her less popular.

Takaichi’s cabinet approval has dropped almost 11 points since she took office, with disapproval surging.  Part of this is due to inflation, but the rest is more sinister. 

Since Takaichi took office, "bot" armies flooding the comments on Japanese social media, claiming she was an “extreme right-winger,” fabricating stories about her family. And Chinese diplomats amplified it all, especially after she said Taiwan's survival was threatened.  (She didn't need to say what nation was threatening it.)

The most effective propaganda takes advantage of legitimate grievances.  In Japan's case, anger over inflation became a launchpad.  Bot farms and paid agents, including Japanese leftists, turn up the volume, sharpen the rage and aim it at whatever leader Beijing wants out of office.

This is the point citizens of every real democracy must absorb. Cognitive warfare doesn’t invent your anger, but directs it, exploits it. When a powerful, hostile nation can significantly reduce the approval rating of the leader of a democracy, the term "warfare" starts to seem more appropriate.

Then you realize: that's what the Democrat-fellating Mainstream media has done in the U.S. for decades.