80 Years On: Japan's Relations with China Shift from Support to Competition

   Beijing, Aug. 12 (Jiji Press)--After Japan assisted the development of the Chinese economy over the past five decades, companies from the two countries now compete globally with each other.
   Japan, which recovered quickly from its defeat in World War II, provided China with financial and technological assistance after Tokyo and Beijing normalized relations in 1972. China is now the world's second-largest economy.
   "Nobody imagined that the Chinese economy would grow so much," said a former executive at a Japanese machinery parts maker based in Aichi Prefecture, which started operations in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, northeastern China, in the 1990s. Infrastructure was not fully in place and power outages occurred frequently at the time, the official said.
   But wages in China later rose in line with its economic growth, forcing the company to move production to Vietnam in 2017. While it still sells products to companies in China, including Japanese automakers, it has lost out to Chinese rivals in recent years.
   The number of Japanese firms operating in China fell to 13,034 in 2024, a decrease of some 10 percent from its 2012 peak, according to Teikoku Databank Ltd., a Japanese credit research company.

(2025/08/12-23:31)

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