This essay examines how Japan’s prolonged economic stagnation was deepened by the neglect of the ultra-strong yen under the Democratic Party government, the transfer of industrial bases to China, and the destruction of Shinzo Abe’s legacy under the Kishida and Ishiba administrations, while arguing that the key to national revival lies in bringing investment back home.
Using Shigeyuki Mizuuchi’s Sankei Shimbun opinion piece, “Learning from Taiwan: Returning Investment to the Domestic Economy to Escape Third-Rate Status,” it contrasts Japanese corporate dependence on China with Taiwan’s strategy of strengthening domestic growth.

What took place during the era of the Democratic Party government.
It is an unmistakable fact that it was the Asahi Shimbun and its followers who created that government.
As a symbol of their incompetence in every respect, they left the ultra-strong yen untouched at the time.
Worse still, they left it untouched because they thought that was perfectly acceptable.
Japanese companies moved their manufacturing bases overseas in droves.
Most of those destinations were China.
Since then, for more than thirty years, Japan’s GDP remained around the then level of roughly 550 trillion yen.
Mr. Abe struggled and brought it to 600 trillion yen, but Kishida and Ishiba, together with their administrations, wrecked it all and reduced it to nothing.
It is also an unmistakable fact that these two never possessed the intellect to understand economics.
All they can do is obey the Ministry of Finance and scatter the people’s tax money abroad.
They are capable of nothing else, the very extreme of incompetence… in other words, two figures of ugliness and stupidity, and the anger of the people, especially Liberal Democratic Party supporters, toward them was so intense that the LDP suffered a crushing defeat.
In short, they nullified every part of Abe’s legacy.
It is also an unmistakable fact that China was rejoicing with delight.
As Japan was sinking and the Liberal Democratic Party was on the verge of extinction under the hands of the exceptionally dull and foolish Ishiba, Prime Minister Takaichi was born.
Prime Minister Takaichi achieved the greatest historic landslide victory in the political history of advanced nations in the postwar world.
Not only the leaders of the G7 nations but prime ministers throughout the world are looking upon Prime Minister Takaichi with envy and admiration.
The only ones doing the opposite are China and the old media beginning with NHK and the Asahi Shimbun.
What that means is that it would not be an exaggeration to say that all senior employees and all members of the press in the old media have fallen into China’s honey traps and money traps.
Now then,
today’s Sankei Shimbun proved that what I have pointed out repeatedly has struck the exact mark.
The profits earned in China cannot be brought back to Japan… therefore they have no choice but to reinvest them in China. Those profits exist only on the balance sheet and have nothing to do with Japan’s GDP.
They have only served to raise China’s GDP.
As a result, a few years ago, Japan was overtaken by China in GDP.
(Even after discounting the fact that China’s figures are fraudulent.)
I felt disappointment and concern when I read the article in which Panasonic’s management announced its new policy.
That was because one of the pillars of management mentioned partnering with Chinese companies.
I was plunged into gloom.
Would Panasonic, through Konosuke Matsushita’s negative legacy = the slogan of postwar Japan’s so-called Japan-China friendship, by which Japan has continued to be deceived by China, sink ever deeper into the swamp and prove unable to break free as SONY did?
A corporate character that, of all things, relies on China has no future but darkness.
As one who had been a Panasonic devotee in everything from audio to home appliances to furniture, I can only feel deep sadness.
I will, however, probably continue to use their hair dryers, electric toothbrushes, razors, and the like.
The following is from today’s opinion page of the Sankei Shimbun.
The emphasis within the text, other than the headline, is mine.
“Escaping Third-Rate Nation Status” Learning from Taiwan the Return of Investment to the Domestic Economy.
By Shigeyuki Mizuuchi.
Taiwan’s economy is driven overall by the semiconductor industry centered on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest semiconductor foundry.
Recently, TSMC’s plant expansion into Japan and the United States has become a topic of discussion, but the company’s fundamental strategy has been to concentrate its production bases within the island of Taiwan.
It is said that this had not only economic rationality behind it, but also a national security aim of making the United States and others feel the importance of protecting the island of Taiwan so that the supply chain would not be severed.
Yet this has supported employment within Taiwan, including related industries, and has brought about a virtuous cycle of rising wages and more vigorous personal consumption.
What Mr. Masaku focuses on is the difference between this and Japanese companies, which tend to choose overseas destinations for investment.
Japan still ought to have many companies, such as automakers, that possess global competitiveness, but, he says, “they have a strong tendency to want to reinvest outside Japan the money they earn at their overseas destinations. No matter how much profit they make, under such a structure it is difficult for Japan’s domestic economy to grow stronger.”
This fiscal year’s tax reform included a system to promote capital investment, strongly advanced by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
It is a system under which a certain percentage of investment can be deducted from corporate tax, or the entire amount of capital investment can be depreciated in a lump sum, with the aim of encouraging companies to invest at home.
The government wants to make this system the trigger for a return of investment, but lately, because of heightened tensions over Iran, it is also said that the environment in which companies can move aggressively into investment has shrunk.
Mr. Masaku also points out that “there is no need to despair that Japan will irreversibly fall into third-rate nation status, but whether we can create a system in which money once again circulates within the country is the watershed moment now.”
(Editor-in-Chief of the Sankei Shimbun, commentary caster for BS Fuji’s ‘Prime News’.)