The One Behind It All Chapter 129

The exchange with Professor Toki Takeuchi, Japan’s National Conditions Adviser, was deeply inspiring to me. There is no shortage of insightful people in Japan. They truly understand Japan's national conditions, understand Japan's symptoms, and understand the only way Japan can get out of its predicament. I believe that the difficulties they are currently encountering are difficulties in structural adjustment, and they will definitely return to the road of revitalization.

Compared with Japan, China's economic development has great advantages. Japan's basic equipment is very complete, and there is nowhere to be built. Japan's environmental protection is very good. It is enviable for such an industrialized country to have such good environmental protection. There is no place for investment in environmental protection. People generally compare We are wealthy and have relatively developed education. I really don’t know where to start to stimulate domestic demand. China's economy is on the rise. Not to mention the west, the infrastructure in the east is also very imperfect. We still don't know how much investment is needed in environmental protection in the east before we can return to green mountains and green waters. Not to mention the people in the west who have not yet escaped poverty, it is the laid-off workers in the east. Workers all need to improve their lives; 1.2 billion people have homes and a good public transportation system, but I don’t know how much investment is needed to solve this problem. With 1.2 billion people across the country receiving education, the project to improve the cultural quality of the entire nation is huge. To reduce the burden on farmers, the state will need hundreds of billions to build multimedia rural primary and secondary schools, not to mention building modern universities into modern universities. It is not known how big the investment opportunities will be. Therefore, once China's domestic demand is launched and all aspects of society invest in it, it will become a continuous behavior, and China will have the opportunity for rapid development for at least 20 to 30 years. However, in the process of development, we must pay attention to the problem of insufficient motivation of the welfare society that may arise once we become rich. If we prevent it in advance, the problems that occurred in Japan will not occur. Currently, welfare countries such as Canada and Northern Europe are facing the dilemma of excessively high taxes, excessive benefits, and a large loss of outstanding talents. If we study and learn lessons carefully, we will continue to develop effectively.

What difficulties have Japanese companies encountered?

We visited industrial companies, which are better than other types of companies. The products are still being sold in the market and the cash flow can still be transferred. It’s just that the eight-year operating growth curve is a flat line, with almost no growth, and total wages have almost no growth, and even declined slightly.

The three types of excess faced by Japanese companies weigh heavily on their heads, making it difficult for them to adjust. The three difficulties are overemployment, equipment overload, and debt overload. These three types of excess adjustments involve institutional reform, structural and industrial restructuring, the transition to developing knowledge innovation industries, and the cultivation of core business capabilities and the shift to speed management. The Japanese corporate system in the past has restricted this transformation and made it difficult. Japanese companies have truly realized that the key is not whether they do something well or poorly, but whether they have core competitiveness.