Repost! As a result, there is a strong possibility of major social upheaval.
Until a few years ago, I used to come to Tokyo regularly.
For some reason, it was most often on the 26th.
That was the release date of the monthly magazines Hanada and WiLL, essential reading not only for Japanese citizens but also for people around the world.
Thanks to them, the two-and-a-half-hour Shinkansen journey was a pleasure rather than a chore.
I could read both magazines on the outward and return journeys.
The following is an essay by a man who was born and raised in China, studied at Peking University and Kobe University, and subsequently had his eyes opened to Japan in Arashiyama, Kyoto.
Seki Hei, who has a Japanese wife and became a naturalized Japanese citizen, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on China.
This essay, too, demonstrates that.
China will not become a “second Japan.”
Recently, as the sinking of the Chinese economy has become increasingly certain, the argument that “China will never become a ‘second Japan’” has been circulating among Chinese people.
In other words, however far the Chinese economy declines, it will not suffer the kind of disastrous situation Japan experienced after its bubble burst.
For example, in March of this year, Chinese Ambassador to Japan Wu Jianghao said in an interview with the Japanese business magazine Zaikai that “China will not become a ‘second Japan,’” making light of Japan.
As the ambassador of the country that gave rise to the four-character idiom “yelang zida”—conceited arrogance born of ignorance of the wider world—it is not entirely incomprehensible that he should say something foolish.
The problem is that Japanese “experts” and the media are parroting this argument.
We must firmly refute it so that the Japanese public is not misled.
However, this column’s conclusion is the same as the aforementioned ambassador’s statement: “China will not become a ‘second Japan.’”
Of course, this means that China is not qualified to become a “second Japan” and could not become one even if it wanted to.
Japan has suffered a prolonged economic slump since its bubble burst in the early 1990s.
The fundamental difference between Japan and China is that Japan experienced the bursting of its bubble after attaining the world’s highest technological standards and establishing its core industries.
For example, in 1980, Japan overtook the United States to become the world’s largest automobile producer, and its semiconductor industry accounted for 70 percent of the global market.
Such a solid industrial foundation enabled the Japanese economy to endure the long period of stagnation following the bubble’s collapse.
In China, however, a real estate bubble developed without any significant core industries.
Until very recently, real estate development was a pillar industry accounting for as much as 30 percent of the economy.
Now that China’s real estate bubble is bursting, what on earth will remain after its pillar industry collapses?
It is often reported in Japan that “China is now focusing on EVs and expanding its share of the international export market,” but this is by no means the result of advanced technological capabilities.
It is a hollow business sustained by exorbitant government subsidies.
As expected, the United States and the EU have taken issue with these subsidies and are moving toward restrictions on EV imports from China.
If the United States and the EU implement these restrictions, China’s EV industry will suffer a devastating blow and promptly sink.
Let us now look at the most important indicator for measuring a country’s economic level and its people’s standard of living: gross domestic product, or GDP, per capita.
In Japan, GDP per capita exceeded $31,000 in 1992, immediately after the bubble burst, showing that it was one of the world’s wealthiest countries.
By contrast, China’s GDP per capita in 2023 was $12,541, less than 40 percent of Japan’s level thirty years earlier.
Moreover, China has an extremely severe gap between rich and poor, and the majority of its citizens are forced to live in conditions far more impoverished than the “GDP per capita” figure would suggest.
At a press conference in May 2020, the late former premier Li Keqiang stunned the world by giving the specific figure that “600 million people in China have a monthly income of 1,000 yuan, or 15,000 yen.”
However, as the economic crisis has worsened further since then, the current situation is probably even more dire.
Think about it.
Can a country in which 600 million of its 1.4 billion people live on a monthly income equivalent to about 15,000 Japanese yen become a “second Japan”?
Is that not a ridiculous question whose answer is obvious from the outset?
I will state it clearly and unequivocally.
China after the bursting of its real estate bubble will not become a “second Japan.”
In the future, China’s troubles will not end with the bursting of its real estate bubble; its entire economy will collapse, unemployment will expand further, and society will enter a period of hopeless stagnation.
As a result, there is a strong possibility of major social upheaval.
Since the beginning of 2023, there has been a sharp increase in cases of Chinese people, including members of the middle class, attempting to enter the United States illegally via South American countries that allow them to enter without visas.
Some walk thousands of kilometers from South American countries in an effort to reach the United States.
The driving force behind this extraordinary behavior must be the despair these Chinese people feel about the dark future awaiting their country.
What on earth about such a country would make it a “second Japan”?