the next reinvented Japan would be easier-living, nonhierarchical, less export-driven, open to the world in all ways (sound like us during the NAFTA debate?!). Having shown the world how to get rich, Japan could illustrate how to be rich.
If you know China mainly through stories of its economic successes, you’re surprised on a visit that it’s still so poor. If you know Japan mainly through stories of its failures, which are real, you’re surprised that it’s become so rich. The houses looked the same, but with bigger, nicer cars in the driveways.
We saw Land Rovers, BMWs, even a Cadillac on the narrow streets that once were full of bikes and little Nissan Sunnys.
In the 1980s, the Tokyu store had run an “American Food Festival,” featuring Big Red soda and bins full of Butterfinger candy bars. Now there are latte shops everywhere, bistros, tapas bars.
only half as many Japanese students are now enrolled at U.S. colleges as 10 years ago—the opposite of the trend in almost every other nation. The tight job market has discouraged students from doing anything as “risky” as spending time outside the Japanese school system.
Japan got rich before it grew old, and China will grow old before it gets rich
Sure, old people steal there, but it sounds like they are doing better than Las Vegas at the moment. I'll take a BMW and a job nearby...
As to the Foreign Policy article that suggests, "a meltdown in Beijing would make Japan's economic malaise look like child's play,", I am in complete agreement, albeit I have only taken a few economics courses so far. My thesis is that though Japan was an imbalanced economy that imploded, they at least had an educated base, still churning out flat screens today. In contrast, China makes cheap and poisoned crap. India can at least speak English and their population is growing, while China slows down, thanks to their short-sighed depopulation policy.
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