In our group of post-80s since childhood, Japan is a developed country. When we were young, who owned a Sony recorder , it was the object of envy. Nintendo game consoles were popular in elementary school, and Walkman became popular after entering middle school. From Walkman, Discman to MD machines, almost all popular consumer electronics products are imported from Japan, and Japanese goods are synonymous with good quality.
never expected that it was the eternal highlight of Japanese goods at the beginning, and Japan has been standing still for more than 30 years since then. Let’s take a look at the picture below:
From 1994 to 2021, China’s GDP rose 30 times in the full 27 years, while Japan’s GDP fell 1.4%, from $5 trillion to $4.94 trillion. This is the 30 years that Japan has lost. The so-called "walking against the current" without advancing, the essence of your standing still is to get backward, because others have gone ahead of you.
Some people jokingly say that Japan may fall from the developed country team back to the team of team this year. At a glance, it seems unlikely, but if you calculate carefully, it is really possible.
Let’s first look at Japan’s per capita GDP 2:
We know that Spain can barely squeeze into the ranks of developed countries, while Spain’s per capita GDP is US$30,000. If the yen continues to depreciate this year, maybe Japan’s per capita GDP will fall below the US$30,000 mark by the end of the year. If it is worse than Spain, it will really fall back to the ranks of developing countries.
The Japanese in the early 1990s may never have dreamed that their descendants had fought for another thirty years and successfully turned their country into a developing country. Many Chinese people are worried about their class falling. Well, this is the real national class falling.
If the previous thirty years have slowly declined, Japan has accelerated its collapse this year. In my opinion, Japan has suffered four critical hits this year, namely:
1, the critical hit of the new crown epidemic;
2, the critical hit of energy price increase;
3, the critical hit of the appreciation of the US dollar;
4, the critical hit of the decline.
The COVID-19 pandemic
This wave of epidemic in August this year, Japan was terrified, and the crematoriums were full. There were 5,100 crematoriums across the country lined up to burn people. It may be possible that half a month would not be able to take the turn.
Last year, the death toll in Japan was 1.43 million, and the birth population was only 810,000. Once both were reduced, the net decrease was 620,000. After August this year, the death toll in the whole year will not be less than 1.6 million, and the birth population will definitely be less than 800,000.
In addition, don’t think that immortality is gentle. Long-term COVID-19 has caused millions of Japanese people to be unable to live normally. Not to mention going to work, it is difficult to maintain daily life. The labor shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is very serious. In August this year, 49% of Japanese companies said they could not recruit enough workers.
What's even more fatal is that the two variants of XBB and XBC have already landed in Japan. I expect that Japan will have another wave starting from November, and it may be even more powerful than this wave in August. People cannot withstand this kind of tossing. Some scholars predict that a normal person can only withstand four waves in extreme state. The first wave is a common cold for you, the second wave is a severe cold, the third wave is pneumonia , and the fourth wave is ICU to prepare for the funeral.
Energy price increase
Japan is the same as Germany. Its energy is scarce in its country. Germany itself still has some coal (just not dig), Japan doesn’t even have much coal, and all Japan’s energy depends on imports. Japan was foolishly following the United States to sanction Russia, but in the end it could not even buy Russia's cheap oil and gas. India made a fortune by reselling Russian crude oil.
Japanese grain, crude oil, natural gas and coal rely entirely on imports. Following the United States sanctions on Russian , the result was that it could only buy expensive oil and gas from the market at high prices. The amount of energy imports increased several times, and exports were in a downturn. There was a trade deficit of for more than ten consecutive months. Can you think of it? The Japanese, who are based on the export economy, have had a trade deficit of more than a year.
The Japanese government is most worried about the trade deficit, but in fact he has no way to solve this problem. He wants to buy cheap oil and gas from Russia. Will the American father agree? It is not right to say that the Japanese are stupid. He has no choice but to behead him. Tens of thousands of local American troops can be beheaded at any time, so Japan is not a normal country, he is just a servant of the United States. Now the American father is not doing well, so it is normal to kill a few servants to live. Look at Germany is not much better than Japan.
appreciation
Japanese people learn from the United States in everything, but do you know that one thing is that the United States learns from Japan, that is, unlimited QE (quantitative easing). The Bank of Japan has been purchasing unlimitedly for more than 20 years. Since the collapse of Japanese bubble economy , from residents to enterprises, they have been saving money to pay off their debts. If everyone pays off their debts and does not borrow money, then deflation will strangle the economy, so the Japanese government has taken on the task of borrowing without hesitation. Now the scale of Japanese government debt is the world's largest, exceeding 226% of GDP.
Such a high debt scale, the interest on repaying debt can crush the Japanese. Currently, fiscal expenditure exceeds 20% is used to pay interest. This is still the case of zero interest rates in Japan, so it is impossible for the Japanese to raise interest rates at all. Once the interest rate is raised, the government will go bankrupt first.
Before Americans had zero interest rates, so there was no big problem. Now Fed has hiked interest rates crazily, and it has increased to more than 3%. This shows an arbitrage transaction. You short Japanese government bonds, and you took the money to exchange for US dollars to eat 3% interest, and risk-free arbitrage of 3 points. This is the fundamental reason for the sharp drop in the yen during this period. Everyone has used yen to exchange for US dollars to arbitrage.
For these arbitrage players, it is impossible for Japan to raise interest rates at all. Once the interest rate is raised, the government will go bankrupt, so you can only watch the yen fall sharply. Then you exchange the yen that will definitely fall for the US dollar to earn interest, and enjoy the gains of the appreciation of the US dollar. This is simply a perfect transaction. This is no longer a way to grab the Japanese wool, but to eat Japanese mutton.
I think the Japanese cannot withstand this kind of blood draw. Now Japan still has a lot of US Treasury bonds. It can last for a period of time by selling treasury bonds, but it cannot last long. Once it reaches a certain key point, it will collapse.
manufacturing decline
above are all knives on the surface, and there are knives that are implicitly poking, that is, China's high-end manufacturing industry encroaches on Japan.
Japan has become so far today. In fact, the failure has long been very obvious. In recent years, news of Japanese goods fraud have been reported one after another. For example, Japan's third largest steel company, " Kobe Steel Institute ", was exposed to tampering with quality inspection related certificates and forging data such as strength and size. Such fraud has lasted for more than ten years, and the company's senior management has acquiesced to this behavior.
Japan's Mitsubishi Company also broke the fraud of "burning efficiency gate". The market generally believes that Japanese cars are fuel-efficient, and the Japanese also promote it this way, but in fact, they cannot do the claimed fuel-efficiency, so they can only fake the fuel-efficiency data. After the investigation, people found that all models sold by the company since 1991 had violated fuel efficiency data, in other words, for at least 20 years.
Have you ever wondered why Japanese people want to fake it? To put it bluntly, it is very simple, because the quality of Chinese manufacturing is getting better and better. The Japanese have no advantage by relying on quality alone, so they can only rely on data fraud to maintain their advantages over Chinese goods.
Economics believes that the pricing of a commodity is determined by the supply and demand relationship. After a period of time, the commodity price will reach an equilibrium state. But do you know that this equilibrium state is not a point, but a very broad range, and the broadness of this range is far beyond your imagination.
If you want to increase the pricing of products, in addition to improving product quality, it is more important to fool, and the importance of fooling is getting higher and higher. As the saying goes, wine is also afraid of deep alleys.
How do the Japanese fool them? It's very simple. All Japanese media will tell you that Japan's products are of good quality and China's products are of poor quality. This is a kind of political correctness. Everyone says this, just like a natural truth. Interestingly, Chinese media also fool you like this: tell you that Japan’s products are of good quality, while China’s products are of poor quality. The result is that it is difficult for Chinese people to raise prices by selling things.
Let’s take a look at a set of examples to see how good the quality of Japanese goods has collapsed.
In 2015, the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force held an open day event. One of the highlights of the event was to let the audience ride the 90 main battle tank . The manufacturer of the Type 90 main battle tank is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries . But just when the audience applauded the excellent mobility of tank , an embarrassing situation suddenly occurred. A large amount of red unknown liquid suddenly began to leak from the bottom of the Type 90 tank, leaking all over the ground...
What is this situation? There was no war at all, so I lost my blood first. Could it be that Japanese tanks would also come to , aunt ? The maintenance staff entered the site for a long time to check, and finally found that the leaking red liquid was all transmission oil.
The tank used for the military open day display must be the best tank in all aspects, but it starts to lose blood while it is running on the concrete floor. How miserable? It's simply a tragedy! However, the Japanese are very optimistic, and someone immediately drew a cartoon to laugh at themselves. 90 tank said: "I am here today and I will fight again another day!"
90 tanks cannot represent Japan's highest military level, and they also have more advanced Type 10 tanks. However, on the same public visit day, the Type 10 tank actually dropped the chain... It was really dropped the chain.
tanks will automatically lose blood and chains. This is nothing, but there is even more bizarre. Merchant ship Mitsui "Mol Comfort" container ship accident occurred 200 miles off the sea of Yemen , and the ship was interrupted in two parts from the middle. A ship was broken in the middle. No matter how big the imagination was, it was impossible to think of it.
Right, General Jin launched dozens of missiles this year, including missiles crossing over Japan, causing great psychological shock to the Japanese. The Japanese also decided that they must find the place, so they ordered the launch of the "Epsilon" No. 6 aircraft. Look at this name - "Epsilon" No. 6, a breath of two hits the face. As a result, just a few minutes after the launch, a failure occurred and had to issue a self-destruction order.
In rocket technology, the Japanese have lagged behind General Jin. General Jin now even has the hypersonic missile , which is a technology that even the United States does not have. In other words, General Jin's rocket attainments have surpassed the United States.
Japanese manufacturing industry has been completely defeated and can only defend two major areas, namely automobiles and semiconductors. I think it only takes 2-3 years for domestic cars to defeat Japanese cars. When the Japanese lose the position of automobiles, they can really go back to farm and fish.
I have always had a view that there are many countries that bully China in modern times, and other countries can forgive it, but Japan cannot forgive it. Why do you say so? Because a Japanese man named Shunki Sakai woke me up, he wrote an article entitled "China should pay attention to the responsibility of the Japanese people's war."
Saisu Toshiki participated in Sino-Japanese exchange activities many times, and he found that the Chinese said like a repeater: Japan’s war of aggression against China is a disaster launched by a few militarists, and the people of both China and Japan are victims. He thought this was not true at all. In his opinion, Japanese fascism is "fascism at the root of grass". It is like a grass that breeds from the roots. It is the militarism that grows from the soil of the Japanese people. If you only oppose militarism and do not hold the Japanese people accountable, it is as ridiculous as a murderer who kills a person. You only hold the knife responsible and do not hold the murderer responsible.
I think Shunki Sakai’s view is very good and deserves our careful consideration. So how to transform the Japanese? It's very simple. An old saying goes: if China is strong, the Japanese will be slaves; if China is weak, the Japanese will be brigades. Only when we strive for self-improvement and crush Japan in all industries can Japanese people truly realize their mistakes.
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