This writer was making a three-week tour of India till a few days ago. Hence this month-long interval.
Now, there was a time, not very long ago, when thousands of Chinese(including Taiwanese) tourists were flooding the department stores and shops here in Japan. I remember once watching a group of them shopping high-grade cosmetics with a calculator in hand at a department store in Tokyo. I would not say that those days are gone by. But the decline in the number of them, and for that matter Koreans also, visiting this country is noticeable.
Take a look at the trade sector. The deficit in Japan's trade during the six month period of April to September, the first half of the present 2012 fiscal year, amounted to the highest so far, after the two previous six-month periods when Japan experienced an increasingly larger deficit. And half of this deficit is with to China.
This is not to deny that the deficit is also due to several complex reasons. After Fukushima, Japan had to import a large amount of additional LNG. Moreover, the economic situation in Europe has also affected our economy, making the trade with the EU deficit for the first time as a six-month period during April to September. This is because the division of labour, so to speak, among Japan, China and Europe in the way that China makes final products out of the intermediate goods imported from Japan etc. and exports them to Europe or the US, has not been working smoothly, with the result that both the import of China from Japan and the export of China to Europe has declined. Japan's export to China in this September has declined by 14% compared to September 2011.
Let us look at the market for Japanese cars in China, which has probably been more affected by the recent twist in Japan-China political relations, and which has also felt the declining purchasing power of the Chinese public in recent times.
In this September, the domestic production of cars in Japan by all the 8 manufacturers combined was 740,000. Against this they have produced 1250,000 abroad, including 220,000 in China, clearly indicating that the centre of their production has shifted abroad, if not only China.
Six of them are producing in China, and their production there has dropped by 28% in September compared to the same month last year. Export of cars from Japan to China has declined by a staggering 45% in the same period. Altogether the share of Japanese cars in the Chinese market in the current fiscal year(April to March) is estimated to come down to 22% from the original 25%.
We will further look at the case of Nissan, one of the six, which, though in the second place after Toyota in the domestic as well as the global markets, has the largest share in China among the Japanese manufactures and has sold one and a quarter million there in the fiscal 2011, and the share of the China market in its global sale is 25%, the highest among the eight. Out of this 20,000 were exported from Japan, mostly high-class costly cars with high profit ratio. Their production in China in September is down by 20%, if not so much as Toyota's 42%. They have decided to stop export to China till the next January.
In Japan where unemployment and semi-unemployment has increased, competition for jobs has unbearably intensified, more people are being deprived of the means of livelihood, homelessness has increased, a large number of small-scale manufacturers who have been the steel-frame of Japan's economy so far are at a cross road of whether remaining here or moving out to some Asian country, one may be justified to say that globalization has gone too far. No, it has gone that far by the policies of the government. The Euro crisis, and more recently, China's expansionist policy, have made the inherent danger more apparent.
Could we not aim at a recovery of the domestic market, so that the ordinary people may be assured of stable employment with a human sense of security.
Now, there was a time, not very long ago, when thousands of Chinese(including Taiwanese) tourists were flooding the department stores and shops here in Japan. I remember once watching a group of them shopping high-grade cosmetics with a calculator in hand at a department store in Tokyo. I would not say that those days are gone by. But the decline in the number of them, and for that matter Koreans also, visiting this country is noticeable.
Take a look at the trade sector. The deficit in Japan's trade during the six month period of April to September, the first half of the present 2012 fiscal year, amounted to the highest so far, after the two previous six-month periods when Japan experienced an increasingly larger deficit. And half of this deficit is with to China.
This is not to deny that the deficit is also due to several complex reasons. After Fukushima, Japan had to import a large amount of additional LNG. Moreover, the economic situation in Europe has also affected our economy, making the trade with the EU deficit for the first time as a six-month period during April to September. This is because the division of labour, so to speak, among Japan, China and Europe in the way that China makes final products out of the intermediate goods imported from Japan etc. and exports them to Europe or the US, has not been working smoothly, with the result that both the import of China from Japan and the export of China to Europe has declined. Japan's export to China in this September has declined by 14% compared to September 2011.
Let us look at the market for Japanese cars in China, which has probably been more affected by the recent twist in Japan-China political relations, and which has also felt the declining purchasing power of the Chinese public in recent times.
In this September, the domestic production of cars in Japan by all the 8 manufacturers combined was 740,000. Against this they have produced 1250,000 abroad, including 220,000 in China, clearly indicating that the centre of their production has shifted abroad, if not only China.
Six of them are producing in China, and their production there has dropped by 28% in September compared to the same month last year. Export of cars from Japan to China has declined by a staggering 45% in the same period. Altogether the share of Japanese cars in the Chinese market in the current fiscal year(April to March) is estimated to come down to 22% from the original 25%.
We will further look at the case of Nissan, one of the six, which, though in the second place after Toyota in the domestic as well as the global markets, has the largest share in China among the Japanese manufactures and has sold one and a quarter million there in the fiscal 2011, and the share of the China market in its global sale is 25%, the highest among the eight. Out of this 20,000 were exported from Japan, mostly high-class costly cars with high profit ratio. Their production in China in September is down by 20%, if not so much as Toyota's 42%. They have decided to stop export to China till the next January.
In Japan where unemployment and semi-unemployment has increased, competition for jobs has unbearably intensified, more people are being deprived of the means of livelihood, homelessness has increased, a large number of small-scale manufacturers who have been the steel-frame of Japan's economy so far are at a cross road of whether remaining here or moving out to some Asian country, one may be justified to say that globalization has gone too far. No, it has gone that far by the policies of the government. The Euro crisis, and more recently, China's expansionist policy, have made the inherent danger more apparent.
Could we not aim at a recovery of the domestic market, so that the ordinary people may be assured of stable employment with a human sense of security.
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