Forum - View topic(OT)China Protests Japanese Businesses
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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I got this off Rueters this morning. It could affect anime and manga exports and so cause studios to further look toward the west for profits.
SHANGHAI, April 11 (AFP) - Bilateral trade has been threatened by two days of protests and calls for the boycott of Japanese goods in China, but the Asian giants are bound by an economic relationship that neither can afford to break. Relations between Beijing and Tokyo have dived in recent months as they have sparred over a host of political and economic issues, but trade has boomed on the back of China's astronomical economic growth. Contentious issues such as Japan's World War II record, the race for energy resources and political influence in Asia have routinely led to diplomatic head-butting. But despite concerns that relations have now sunk to their lowest point in three decades, the inextricable economic interdependency of the region's two strongest powers was likely to prove their saving grace, analysts said. "At the leadership level both sides remain very rational and both sides are working quite hard to improve their relationship," said Zheng Yongnian, an analyst at the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore. "The interdependence of the economic relationship is mutually beneficial," said Zheng. "China needs Japan's investment as much as Japan needs Chinese manufactured goods." As China has gained in economic clout, it has become both a global manufacturing centre backed by cheap labour and a consumer market growing on the back of an emerging middle-class hungry for cars and electronics products. Low-priced Chinese-made goods have been flowing into the Japanese market while Japanese firms are boosting their factory capacity and sales networks in the neighbouring country. Last year Japan's trade with China, including the special administrative region of Hong Kong, totalled 22.2 trillion yen (214 billion dollars), outpacing the 20.5 trillion yen with the United States. Japan is China's third largest trading partner as exports last year hit 73.5 billion dollars and imports totalled 94.3 billion dollars. Recognising that hundreds of billions of dollars and the health of their economies are at stake, both sides usually take care to avoid mixing politics and business,said Ralph Cossa, China specialist at the Pacific Forum CSIS in Hawaii. "Chinese separate economics from politics. Japanese businessmen also make an effort to separate the two," Cossa said. Yet despite the economic boon, the weekend's violent protests against Japan's treatment of its wartime history was a clear reminder that when tempers flare politics and business can suddenly become uncomfortably intertwined. Song Chengyou, a research fellow at Japan Research Centre of Beijing University, said citizens' calls to boycott Japanese goods did not represent the government's position. "Boycotting embodies the will of Chinese people and their anger (about Japanese wartime atrocities)," said Song. "It is volunteer and individual activity which has nothing to do with Chinese government because what the government wants is order and the use of reason," he said. Hideaki Kase, a Japanese author and historian, said Chinese people could choose to buy products from other countries, affecting some Japanese companies, but the economic reality was far more complex. "The Chinese economy is like a drug addict and needs foreign investment to continue high growth. If Japanese companies hesitate to invest there, it would also be no good for China," Kase said. "Japanese businesses are also drunk with the China bubble ... as Japan's current economic recovery depends much on exports to China," Kase said. bms/mp/br AFP 110937 GMT APR 05 |
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Twage
Posts: 358 Location: North Bergen, NJ |
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As dramatic as they make it sound, this probably isn't really that big of a deal in the larger scheme of things. It's like some kind of law of the universe that Japanese publishing houses will try to paper over the war and Koreans and Chinese will get pissed off about it. Hopefully this kind of thing will stop eventually, but until someone tells me different I'm not seeing these protests as all that extraordinary. Plus the trade aspect is going to contribute to solving this problem, so I don't really see how these protests could have a negative effect on anime/manga exports. People in this world seem to have an easy time separating governments from entertainment, at least if all the people who watch Titanic and then go out and burn Bush in effigy are any indication. |
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Mohawk52
Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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It was quite a large enough protest in Bejing to cause negative jitters on the Nikkei by Chinese exporting Japanese companies both yesterday and today. So it's shaken them a bit if not stirred.
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