Who are losers?
The movement of anti-Japan in China is very heated. “The Chinese are angry about several issues: a new Japanese textbook that critics say glosses over World War II atrocities; Japan's bid to win a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, and the Japanese prime minister's visits to a shrine that honors war criminals.” The political tension was spread to the business filed. The most damaged field is tourism. More than 5,500 travelers who planed to travel China in April and May have canceled their plans so far. “The benchmark Nikkei Stock Average plunged 3.8 percent Monday to end at its lowest point since Dec. 16.” In the mainland of China, people refuse to buy Japanese products. An honorary professor of China studies at Yokohama City University said that Japanese Business may experience risk under such situation.
Although China and Japan had an unpleasant history, the relationship is getting better after China opened her door to the world. There is a lot of cooperation between these two countries now that China is Japan’s first trading partner. A lot of Japanese products were very popular in China, such as electricity commodities and cars. By looking at many counties’ economic reforms, we discovered that almost all of the countries, regardless of their political systems, moved to open economy. Being either an exporter or importer will make a county better off. Anti-Japanese products or trade cutting will cause both China and Japan great losses (What is your opinion about this?). If the tension keeps for a long time, I think this may even affect global economy. Economy should not be a victim of politics. I think both countries need be calm and create a healthy, cooperative environment.
1 comment:
Game theory shows that in international relations (indeed in any negotiation) weakness can be strength. That is by deliberately circumscribing your actions, you can get a better result. A good example of this is how you win a game of "chicken", destroy your ability to turn.
The PRC is doing the same thing here. I doubt the Chinese government particularly cares about what's in Japanese textbooks, but they do care about Japan getting a seat on the Security Council and oil and gas exploration on certain islands. China can thus whip up ultra-nationalist feelings among its people and tell the world "Well we'd like to give Japan this, but our people won't allow it". Of course the PRC is playing a dangerous game here. It'll be very hard to squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube once popular uprisings have started. This could consume them as well. Plus it doesn't bode well for the image China is trying to project about itself as a respectible power that they declared economic war against their #1 trade-partner (then again the USA doesn't seem to suffer in image for imposing lumber tariffs against its #1 trade partner)
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