http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/global/01trade.html
sad to see the Japanese in a bad way. If India ever had a 'natural ally' it is the Japanese and not the Pakistan-loving Yanks.
Japan has huge amount of reserves ---> we need money for infrastructure spending (thanks for the memories PC!);
Japan has a shrinking population and needs to earn more on their reserves --> we have a growing population that will work and earn;
Japan needs to shrink the strategic space for China --> we need to enlarge our space
Hans are next in line for getting old before getting rich. except they have a full generation of angry, unmarried young men to get through. hence the attack on India - and the carting away of poor Vietnamese girls
4 comments:
I've been thinking that we may have to consider the Koreans instead of the Japanese, since the patrician Japanese consider us to be too unsanitary and unruly. The Koreans are at least a little earthier, although they're increasingly dependent upon China's goodwill.
san - Japan may not be an immigrant-friendly place and given to isolationism, if not xenophobia. But to pin hopes on the Koreans would be foolish. They have nowhere the amount of reserves and economic clout that the Japanese have and are in no position to counter China on their own. in fact, they are a lot like Taiwan - totally a US lackey.
Finally - I would not touch the Koreans with a bargepole because they are all dyed-in-the-wool Chritist's. The American south does not have the kind of bible-belters as them Kim's.In fact, looking at how the Korean social fabric is unraveling I have to say I do not begrudge the Japanese their paranoia of foreigners
Well, not all Koreans are converts -- there are still a large number of Buddhists in the country, and they don't like the convert brigades any more than we do. So I'd say that these ones are the ones we should look at more. Korea as a whole is catching upto Japan very quickly.
They don't have our numbers of course, and so we will pass their GDP in the next couple of years, just as China will surpass Japan's in about 3 years.
The Japanese are looking more and more like deer caught in the headlights, unable to make up their minds on whether to change themselves or even which way to go and how to go about it.
I'm thinking they'll have to suffer a catastrophic social breakdown first, to push them into another Meiji Restoration. They'll first have to reach a point of chaos, to light a fire under their firmly planted feet.
I somehow think North Korea, despite its evil aura, exists to save the Koreans from evangelical onslaught. The South Koreans are among the most zealous proselytizers in this world. 90+% of the CEOs of big corporations there are Christians.
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