Japan Press Weekly

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2024 February 21 - 27 [JCP]

This week’s JCP international activities

Kasai attends Hong Kong trade office’s Lunar New Year reception

Japanese Communist Party member of the Houe of Representatives Kasai Akira on February 21 attended a Lunar New Year reception held in a Tokyo hotel by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR)’s Economic and Trade Office in Tokyo. Kasai exchanged greetings with Winsome AU, the principal representative of the Hong Kong SAR Government for Japan, and had conversations with guests at the reception.

Kami meets with French leftist party lawmaker

Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Councilors Kami Tomoko on February 22 in the Diet building met with visiting French parliamentarian Loic Prud’homme of the leftist “France Unbowed” party.

Prud’homme, who was an agricultural engineer before he became a lawmaker, now works on the Sustainable Development, Spatial and Regional Planning Committee of the French National Assembly. He told Kami about the situation of struggling farmers in France under the ongoing neoliberal reforms and stated that the government is obliged to adopt a policy to protect the country’s agriculture in order to produce safe food for the benefit of both farmers and consumers.

Kami, who heads the JCP Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Bureau, agreed with Prud’homme. She said that a direct government subsidy given to farmers in Japan accounts for only 30.2% of their farming income while subsidies account for 64% in France and 77% in Germany. She stated that the Japanese government should make a policy shift from import liberalization to one focusing on guaranteeing prices for farm products and subsidizing farmers’ income so that farmers can continue to work on the farm.