I am reminded of a story called The Match Girl. This is a Danish fairy tale. During a snowstorm, a child kept warm by striking matches, and finally froze to death. Such a thing actually happened in the United States, the most developed country in the world. Someone froze to death in a car for two days and two nights, and no one knew about it.
This time there is a winter storm hitting the United States. We who live in the south are all familiar with typhoon . Every time a typhoon passes through Hong Kong or Guangdong, when we make comments, we have to look at how many people have died due to the typhoon. Over the years, there have been very few deaths. If they have, they are very rare. People have already developed a sense of prevention. Things that have fallen have been dismantled long ago. And when there is strong wind, everyone should not go out and hide at home.
This storm in the United States actually froze to death in an instant, and 55 people in developed countries froze to death. This is a very rare phenomenon, which shows that the quality of life of Americans is declining. Some people have calculated that in 1950, when New China was first founded, 2/3 of households in the United States did not have flush toilets, which are what we call dry toilets. Therefore, after many years of hard work in the United States, especially the economic globalization it has engaged in, it can spend the least money to obtain maximum consumption.
So 20 years ago, most families in the United States had flush toilets, and they were proud to say that we have at least two cars in a family, but now there are actually many people sleeping on the streets. Los Angeles actually declared a state of emergency because there were too many people sleeping on the streets, and they had to deal with these people to prevent them from freezing to death. Although this storm also caused 55 people to freeze to death in the United States. It's really incomprehensible.
Then the prosperity of the United States comes from globalization. It exchanges its own advantages with the world so that Americans can enjoy very good consumption. However, this order is being broken by the United States itself. How to break it? It is destroying globalization. American supremacy is actually harming the United States. It is precisely because of globalization that the United States has obtained these cheap products and cheap things that they can live such a good life. So now there are several lawsuits filed in the World Trade Organization WTO, and China has won all of them.
Even China and Australia have more than 160 countries joining forces to sue the United States for its delay. The appointment of WTO judges has seriously affected the operation of the WTO. Even Australia has stood up and spoken out. So the United States is surprised. Why everyone has objections to me is because you are too selfish, and your selfishness will eventually harm you. After you mess up globalization, the cost of living for Americans will become higher and higher, and the income of Americans will decrease.
So what will happen in the end? It will end up like the situation in Japan today. Some people say that Japan has been lying flat for 30 years. One of the important reasons is the suppression by the United States. The United States must suppress anything that Japan has high-tech development. Although it is its pawn and its most iron-clad ally in Asia, the Japanese think it is not that simple. It is because you are holding a gun to my head.
Your troops are still stationed here. If I don't obey, you can deal with me. How dare I disobey you? This is such a mentality. Therefore, Japan's high-tech technology has developed to a certain extent and was shot by the United States. Now it has to completely shoot its semiconductor . Then where to move to the United States after it is shot? Now the latest statistics of Japan's per capita GDP has finally dropped from 40,000 US dollars, and now it is only 39,800 US dollars.
What is the concept? Even some Japanese business friends around me say that we are already working hard to move towards developing countries, because the standard for developed countries is generally US$20,000 per capita GDP, which has now been adjusted from 40,000 to 39,000. So, 20 years ago, Japan's per capita GDP ranked second in the world. Now Japan's GDP global per capita GDP ranking in 2022 is 28th in the world, so now it is the last per capita GDP among developed countries.
And they can't see that Japan's future technological innovation and will lead the world trend. No one can see what kind of product it is. What's more important is the depreciation of the yen. The depreciation of the yen has caused many Japanese to work in Japan and cannot adequately support their families. Many people go to work abroad. One of them is called a tourist work visa, which means that when you apply for a local work visa while traveling, you can do some work to earn some money.
The latest statistics show that Japan has applied for more than 4,600 tourist and work visas to Australia, which proves that although the unemployment rate in Japan is not high, wage income, especially the depreciation of the yen, has been known in the past. In the past, when calculating the yen and the U.S. dollar, it was usually 100 yen, which is easy to calculate in exchange for a dollar. In recent years, it has been 150 yen and 140 yen, and now the latest is 132 yen. Although it has increased a bit, the actual income of Japanese people, especially when traveling abroad, is obviously less.
So now, the economic performance and life performance of the United States and Japan indicate that they have given up on globalization, technological innovation, or artificial intervention in the market economy. In the end, it is these interveners who will be unlucky, and other countries may benefit from this. For example, the United States often uses its dollar stick to suppress some countries, most obviously Russia. In the process of suppressing it, it inadvertently supports the international status of the RMB.
Now Russian statistics show that Russian companies settle their accounts. Although the largest number of settlements is US dollars, in the past, US dollars accounted for 50% of all enterprises' settlements in US dollars. Now it has dropped to only 34% and RMB has risen to 31%. Only 31% of enterprises are willing to use RMB to settle, while the use of euros has decreased, and the euro has only dropped to 28%. Moreover, the bilateral trade between China and Russia is growing rapidly.
A few years ago, I heard people talking about how bilateral trade could exceed US$100 billion. This year, it will definitely exceed US$200 billion in 2022. This trend means that when the east is not bright, the west is bright, and when the west is not bright, the east is bright, so everything must be reversed.