As I said many time trying to rope in Japan in effort to contain China is just futile effort It will never work because the Japanese captain of industry know which side of the bread is buttered. And by extension the rest of Asia will balk at effort to contain China. Here is an excellent article from William Pesek
No competitor, though, can rival China’s scale. Given its so far successful battle against Covid-19, 2.3% growth in 2020 and prospects for 8% this year, Japan Inc would seem to have few incentives to look back. Japanese CEOs, it seems, get something that neither Trump nor Abe did: the game is learning to live with China, not to be used as proxies in .
This tale, though, is as much about missed opportunities on Japan’s part as China’s rise.
Why Japan Inc can’t and won’t quit China
Japan's corporate giants have mostly spurned Tokyo's US-urged call to 're-shore' their China-based production facilities
By
FEBRUARY 12, 2021
TOKYO – As the fog of economic war lifts, the ways in which China outmaneuvered Donald Trump’s White House are becoming clearer. Nowhere more so than in Japan, a nation the former US president tried hard to pull out of China’s commercial orbit.
Though Trump’s decoupling-from-China imperative was rather America-centric, he cajoled Tokyo early and often to join the battle. And Shinzo Abe, prime minister from 2012 to 2020 and old-school Japanese nationalist, was happy to oblige.
Abe pursued an ambitious “
” scheme. And in the last six months of his premiership, which ended last September, he leaned into supply chain disruptions related to the coronavirus. He even sweetened the deal, offering subsidies to companies bringing jobs back from China.
The scheme hasn’t gone well, if a September 2020 survey by the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) is any guide. JETRO found that only 7.2% of Japanese companies operating in China either planned or considered shifting production out of China. That is down from an already paltry 9.2% in 2019.
The real figure is arguably even lower. Given the historical antipathy between Japan and China, few CEOs want to admit they’re not at least mulling decreasing exposure to President Xi Jinping’s nation. It follows, then, that the number of manufacturers scouting production sites on the other side of the East China Sea is far smaller.
That said, Abe’s team — and Trump’s, too — should’ve known the policy had little potential from Toyota Motors. Top-down Tokyo loves a precedent and none matters more than what the global vanguard of Japan Inc does.
Back in 2015, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda reaffirmed the auto giant’s intention to follow where the growth is. And that meant — and still means — China. Xi’s economy was a major beneficiary of Toyota’s plan that year to lavish $1.4 billion on new factories.
