by liberal japonicus
Picking up an earlier thread, this article may be of interest
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Decoupling-denied-Japan-Inc.-lays-its-bets-on-China
Not sure if you read it on your phone, you bypass the paywall or I was within the maximum of free visits, but here are some grafs
TOKYO -- In 1978, when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping visited a factory belonging to what is now Panasonic Corp. in Osaka, he made Chairman Konosuke Matsushita an offer he couldn't refuse.
That year, China's economy lay in ruins following the Cultural Revolution. But Deng had an idea. Turning to Matsushita, his guide on the tour, he said: "You are called the god of management. Will you help us modernize our economy?"
Matsushita, fatefully, agreed. The following year he traveled to China and told Beijing factory workers, "You are working very hard to learn to make TVs. If you keep up the effort, you'll catch up with Japan in several years and start developing new technologies."
He was right. In 1987, Panasonic established Japan's first Chinese joint venture in Beijing, training 250 assembly line workers in Japan for half a year to finally launch local production in 1989.Matsushita did not live to see the fruits of this bargain: Today, China accounts for 1.7 trillion yen ($16 billion), or a quarter of Panasonic's business, including sales within China, and exports mainly to Japan.
In contrast to Panasonic, there is Toyota
Japan Inc. is mostly doubling down on China, and one prime example is Toyota Motor. The carmaker took the opposite approach to Panasonic in the late 1970s: After Deng returned from his 1978 visit to Japan, the Chinese government asked Toyota to come to China to open local production. The Japanese automaker declined, choosing to focus on moving production to the U.S. Toyota now recognizes this as a strategic error of historic proportions.
In 1994, Toyota belatedly announced a plan to enter China, but it took until 2000 to form its first joint venture in Tianjin. Today, its sales numbers tell the tale: At rivals Honda Motor and Nissan Motor, China accounted for about 30% of sales volume in the fiscal year ended March 2020, but at Toyota that share was only 18%.
Toyota got a second chance in 2018 as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited its plant in Hokkaido. Li took interest in Toyota's fuel cell vehicle, a technology Li saw as key to emissions reduction. This time, Toyota did not miss the Chinese overture. "This is our last chance," a Toyota executive said.
In June 2020, Toyota announced the establishment of a joint venture with five Chinese companies to develop fuel cell systems for commercial vehicles. The partners include China First Automobile Works and Guangzhou Automobile Group, two longtime Toyota JV partners. Then, in October, Toyota agreed to supply Guangzhou Automobile its gasoline-electric hybrid system -- the first time for it to be offered to a foreign company. Toyota also released a Lexus electric vehicle and an all-electric SUV in China ahead of Japan last year.
In 2019, Toyota formed a partnership with two Chinese autonomous driving startups -- with Pony.ai for road testing and with Momenta for high-definition mapping. That same year, the Japanese company joined the Apollo project, the self-driving development platform spearheaded by Chinese search engine provider Baidu.
A lot of outcomes short of war could really put a dent. It also may surprise folks to know that the LDP (the Japanese ruling party) is divided into factions, and one major faction is a pro-China faction. Here is a 2016 article about the history, I don't follow Japanese politics closely enough to know who is know and what is happening now, but the assumption that Japan will simply follow the US is optimistic at best.
Also, on a potentially related note, Japanese colonialism was mentioned as a whatabout in response to problems with Western hegemony. I didn't mention it at the time, but before I travelled to Vietnam the first time, I was pretty nervous, being a Japanese-American. But I found my reception quite interesting. As for the American part, well anecdotally, the impression I got was that Vietnamese viewed themselves as the winners and Americans as the losers, so the vibe was more magnaimous. But when I explained I was Japanese, there was a (and this is anecdotal) a jump in respect. Despite Japan being occupiers (and here's a fun fact, after the war, rather than disarming the Japanese, the French, because they had limited manpower to reoccupy the colony, had the Japanese keep their guns and maintain the peace), it wasn't the loss to the US that Vietnamese took away. It was that they had beat the US and the West at their own game. While it gives us that freshman dorm vibe to talk about whether Western civilization would be a good idea, there are connections among Asians that the US ignores at its peril.
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