Sino-Japan Trade Relations
The bilateral trade between China and Japan amounted to US$236 billion in 2007, reflecting an increase of 20.6 percent compared with the previous year, 33 times over the trade volume at the beginning of the reform and opening up. This vast volume and fast growth took place amid China’s accession into the World Trade Organization at the end of 2001 and increased trade disputes between the two countries, not to mention recurrent foreign exchange rate fluctuations in international currency markets and somehow intensified fears in Japan of China’s enhanced competitiveness.
Given this background, it is of interest to speculate on what future prospects will be for the two neighbors’ economic relations, and in particular, what has been special in their bilateral economic relations as well as what challenges lie ahead for them.
I. Characteristics of Sino-Japanese Trade
Bilateral diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and Japan were normalized in 1972, shortly after the United States President Richard Nixon visited Beijing but well before the normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979. During the year immediately prior to Sino-Japanese diplomatic normalization, the two countries’ bilateral trade stood at about 900 million dollars, approximately 4 percent of China’s total external trade at the time. Normalization was quickly followed by a sharp rise in China’s imports of Japanese goods, first mainly of textile goods and various machinery tools, and later of household electronics, cars and light trucks, etc.
Sino-Japanese relations made considerable progress in the 1980s. Only a few years after China’s reform and opening in 1978, Japanese brands of TV sets and cars flooded into Chinese markets, and ordinary Chinese consumers began to taste the products of western materialism. Surges in Chinese imports of Japanese goods, through various means and channels of trade, led China to accumulate serious trade deficits and to draw on her official foreign exchange reserves. This ultimately resulted in substantial Chinese currency devaluations throughout the 1980s.
The growth of China’s external trade dipped in 1989-1990 perhaps mainly due to various non-economic reasons, but the bilateral trade with Japan continued to expand at a steady rate. In 1993 Japan surpassed Hong Kong to become Chinese Mainland’s largest trade partner, by official Chinese statistics, and it has remained so ever since. Overall, between 1990 and 2002, the growth of bilateral trade between China and Japan in dollar terms averaged 16.3 percent per annum, exceeding that of China’s total external trade over the same period (15 percent). From 2000 to 2007, annual foreign trade volume increased by 16 percent.
The fact that the growth in bilateral trade between China and Japan since the early 1990s has been rapid and more or less steady (except briefly for 1997-98), appears somehow unusual or even puzzling. First, during many of the years of the period, the Japanese economy and Japan’s overall external trade had slowed down significantly compared to the 1980s. Second, as the Asian financial crisis hit many of the economies and their intraregional trade hard, bilateral trade between China and Japan suffered only a slight setback, if any, during the turbulent two years of 1997-98. Third, when the Japanese yen witnessed significant depreciations vis-à-vis the US dollar whilst Chinese Yuan continued steady peg to the US dollar during 1998 and 2000, China’s Japanese imports/exports seemed not to have been reactive to the changes in the foreign exchange rates. In the case of 1998, China’s exports to Japan did decrease by a moderate amount (a 7 percent fall), which was nonetheless proportionally smaller than the overall falling level in Japan’s imports (an 11.4 percent fall). In the case of 2000, China’s exports to Japan actually increased by a large amount, unscathed by any unfavorable moves in the currency markets. However, as long as the further appreciation of Chinese Yuan to US dollar, the pressure on exporting industry in China becomes more serious than ever before.
These “unusuals” seem to suggest that there have been fundamental, structural driving forces behind the growth in the bilateral trade between China and Japan. Had Sino-Japanese economic relations been similar to other ordinary bilateral economic relations, a rather slower growth in the bilateral trade could have been expected instead. Moreover, even if (from a Chinese point of view) China’s economy and trade have achieved a high growth record, it remains to be wondered why China’s trade with Japan grew faster than her trade with the entire outside world since the early 1990s.
II. The Sino-Japanese “Special Relationship”
Right now, China has surpassed U.S. to be the largest trade partner to Japan, and Japan means the third largest trade partner to China as well. At mean time, Japan is the largest importing origin country and the fourth largest exporting market of China.
It should be kept in mind as always that both at the beginning of our reform and opening and presently after three decades of development, China was and still is in a catching-up process in relation to the developed world where Japan has long belonged. Over this period, both China and Japan have undergone a number of fundamental economic structural changes, and these have affected their trade and economic relations. What will be of interest to us here are the common or enduring factors that have been effective within the dynamics of interaction between demand and supply on each side of the two countries’ economic relations.
We will look first at China’s demand for Japanese products and then at Japan’s demand for Chinese products.
With a growing economy and an increasingly diversified trade partnership network throughout the 1990s, China’s demand for Japanese products had gradually moved into relatively high quality consumer goods and internationally price-competitive industrial goods. It is well-known that a breed of new domestic Chinese producers of electronics has emerged and has expanded their share in China’s domestic markets, resulting in a fall in the market shares that used to be enjoyed by certain Japanese brands. Yet Japanese manufacturers as a whole have been successful in investing in Research and Development, moving on to upscale markets, thus maintaining their competitiveness in the world manufacturing market as well as in China’s domestic market. On the other hand, the role of Japanese direct investment in China and Japan’s financial aid to China in promoting bilateral trade should also be noted.
Throughout the 1990s Japan’s direct investment had been virtually invariably more than 10 percent of China’s FDI inflow in annual terms, though there had been some marked falls between 1997 and 2000. Moreover, Japanese direct investment in China has been relatively concentrated in manufacturing, which is believed to have a stronger effect in generating trade linkages between the two countries than otherwise.
Japan had been investing in China during the early 1990s, and trade decreased during the late 1990s, but resurged at the millennium. The resurgence might have been because of the prospect of China becoming a part of the World Trade Organization (WTO). “By 2001 China’s international trade was the sixth-largest in the world” and over the next several years it is expected to be just under Japan, the fourth largest. Up to December, 2007, the real invest from Japan to China accumulated to US$61.56 billion. Japan turns to the second largest investing origins to China.
Japan’s financial aid to China (first begun with the diplomatic normalization in the 1970s), mainly through government-to-government channels, has totaled some US$20 billion in the form of lending on favorable terms, together with some additional US$2 billion mainly in the form of technical assistance. Japan is the largest provider of financial aid to China. The role of this financial aid has been significantly positive and multifaceted in China’s development process, and it has certainly helped the growth of bilateral trade.
Since 1995 Japan has been taking a very proactive role in using WTO law to challenge its dominant trade partners, the United States. But its emphasis on a rule-based approach is not only relegated to the United States. In fact, it promises also to spill over into trade disputes with key partners in Asia where, for historical, reasons Japan has had trouble taking confrontational stances. This is particularly true for the case for China, which is widely perceived as the rising economic power that poses a direct challenge to Japan across a number of critical and sensitive economic issues. This paper focuses specifically on the interplay between WTO law and politics as Japan seeks to deal with China across a number of trade issues and disputes.
Sino-Japanese trade relations boast great growth potential and the two sides should make more efforts to push economic cooperation in more fields.
China and Japan have made much headway in terms of bilateral trade in the past 30 years, when their bilateral trade volume expanded, with more types of goods traded, and they have played an increasingly important role in each other's trade development.
Japan is China's third largest trade partner and the fourth largest export destination while China replaced the US in July to become the No 1 export destination of Japan. The volume of bilateral trade jumped to $236 billion last year from a meager $4.8 billion in 1978, a 48-fold increase. During this time, China had a trade deficit with Japan for most of the years.
However, Sino-Japanese trade growth still lags behind that of China's overall trade. In 1978, Sino-Japanese trade accounted for 23.4 percent of China's total trade while last year it had shrunk to less than 11 percent. Unwelcome as it is, it also shows that bilateral trade still has great potential to expand further.
Japan has supported China's economic development through yen loans and grants. By the end of last year, Japan had committed to a total of $30 billion to China for financing 255 projects.
Another $1.27 billion has been earmarked in grants to help China's social causes, such as education and poverty reduction.
As Chinese President Hu Jintao said in a speech during his visit to the Waseda University in May: "The Japanese government has played a positive role in China's modernization drive by making Japanese yen loans in support of China's infrastructure construction, environmental protection, energy development and scientific and technological advancement."
Japan also benefits from its yen loans for China. Through the yen loans, it can ensure imports of Chinese resources, provide more opportunities for its enterprises to export to and invest in the Chinese market. Japanese enterprises, for example, have had much more investment in such places as the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and areas surrounding Bohai Sea. They used to invest mainly in Dalian, Liaoning province.
As Sino-Japan economic cooperation deepens, the market has replaced government as the major driving force for bilateral trade and investment growth. The yen loans have been earmarked for projects in more fields, such as environment since 1996, and Chinese enterprises have expanded investment in Japan, with some listed in the Japanese stock market.
With those achievements, the two countries need to strengthen cooperation in sectors of mutual concern, such as energy saving and environment. Japanese enterprises are not very active in technological transfers owing to IPR concerns. They have transferred mainly low-end technologies to China.
As the Chinese government is enhancing IPR protection, it is advisable for Japanese enterprises to enter China to have the "first-mover" advantage in future cooperation. Meanwhile, the prices of technological transfers are often too high for Chinese firms to afford, which is also a hurdle for technology trade between the two countries.
The two sides should also enhance cooperation between Japanese small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and Chinese businesses through such moves as establishing a "Japan SME Park". The China Association of International Trade is now setting up a system to help products of Japanese SMEs to enter the Chinese market.
it is of interest to speculate on what future prospects will be for the two neighbors’ economic relations, and in particular, what has been special in their bilateral economic relations as well as what challenges lie ahead for them.
Had Sino-Japanese economic relations been similar to other ordinary bilateral economic relations, a rather slower growth in the bilateral trade could have been expected instead. Moreover, even if (from a Chinese point of view) China’s economy and trade have achieved a high growth record, it remains to be wondered why China’s trade with Japan grew faster than her trade with the entire outside world since the early 1990s.
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