Yusuke Narita, an associate professor at Yale University and an economist, appeared on TBS's "Sunday Japon" on the 16th. He said that the large-scale staff cuts at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) being promoted by President Trump and Elon Musk are "similar to China's Cultural Revolution."

Regarding Musk, who is a special government employee at the Ministry of Government Efficiency and is working on a project to cut spending on a scale of 300 trillion yen, Narita said, "It feels like a mini coup. Many intellectuals and media outlets are using the words coup and subversion."

"In reality, Elon Musk is just a private citizen. A super-rich man has entered the heart of government and is cutting hundreds of trillions of yen and tens of thousands of civil servants. I don't think something like this has happened very often in history," he said in surprise.

"What's more, this is happening in the form of oppressing certain beliefs and ideologies. In a sense, what's happening is the same type of oppression of certain people that took place in China during the Cultural Revolution, using money, budgets and personnel," he lamented.

The Cultural Revolution was a political movement that took place in China under the Mao Zedong regime from 1966 to 1976, in which 10 million intellectuals and others were purged as counter-revolutionaries.

Narita expressed concern about the danger, saying, "I think this is not something that is just happening in the US. There is a lot of anger about the government increasing taxes, raising social insurance premiums, and wasting money and creating slush funds. If this works out, it would have such an impact that it would not be surprising if politicians and political parties in Japan emerged with slogans like, 'We will destroy government wastefulness.'"