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TOKYO, Dec. 28, 2021—China no longer hides its claws in dominating the world with its industrial and consume products. On Monday, Dec. 27, 2021, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission announced Beijing will be lifting investment restrictions on foreign automakers in their Chinese joint ventures, effective Jan. 1, 2022, according to Japan’s Nikkei newspaper English language website (https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/China-scraps-foreign-investment-curbs-in-auto-sector) Dec. 28.
While the dereg is part of the April 2018 decision to open up the Chinese auto market in phases, t’s a demonstration of confidence in Chinese automotive battery technology. Tesla is currently installing Chinese-made lithium iron phosphate (LFP) on its standard-range models. European automakers also are believed to be following the lead, in addition to lithium-ion batteries. U.S. and European battery makers as well as automakers rely Chinese suppliers for automotive batteries. China accounts for 95 percent of global LFP batteries and substantial portions of minerals including cobalt and nickel used for LFP batteries. Chinese EV buses account for more than 90 percent of global bus fleets.
Traditional foreign automakers that currently hold 50 percent stake in Chinese automakers under the current regulation can buy out what their Chinese counterparts own but they have to rely on CATL, BYD and other Chinese battery makers for core vehicle energy sources.

Nikkei Dec. 28, 2021 report:
BEIJING — The Chinese government has abolished limits on foreign automakers’ investments in the passenger vehicle sector, effective next year, sweeping away the last major restriction on global players.
Passenger vehicles will on Jan. 1 come off the so-called negative list restricting investment by foreign corporations, according to Monday’s announcement by the Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission. Local media characterize the step as China further opening up to the world.
The move makes good on an April 2018 announcement that China would open up its automotive sector in phases. New-energy vehicles, such as electric vehicles, received the treatment that year, followed by commercial vehicles in 2020. The remaining segment, passenger vehicles, accounts for 80% or so of the auto market.
A foreign automaker can currently operate in China only through a joint venture in which its stake is capped at 50%. It can establish up to two such ventures, though this limit does not apply in new-energy vehicles.
Many outside China had called for the government to swiftly open up the world’s largest auto market.
After the investment restrictions on EVs were lifted, Tesla set up a wholly owned Chinese subsidiary that began to build EVs in 2019. Volkswagen raised its 50% stake in an EV joint venture to 75% in 2020.
Now, BMW is expected to raise its ownership in a 50-50 joint venture in Liaoning Province. It had long planned to level up to a 75% stake in the unit in 2022.
Japanese automakers Toyota Motor, Honda Motor and Nissan Motor also have 50-50 joint ventures in China. Although removing the investment cap promises more managerial freedom, many in the Japanese camp are hesitant.
“Considering the importance we place on having trusting relationships with our Chinese partners, we will think carefully about raising our investment ratio,” an executive at a major Japanese player said.

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TOKYO, Dec. 12, 2021—Panasonic Corp., bucking the global Shun-China move, has agreed with China’s TCL to have its television production, excluding high-end products, manufactured in China, starting in 2022, Japanese media reports said over the weekend.
The TV products to be manufactured by TCL on a so-called original equipment manufacturing basis are those sold in Asia and India. Panasonic will continue manufacturing OLED televisions and other high-end products in Japan.
In 2010, the company sold more than 20 million televisions globally but in 2019, the number fell to 5 million units, its television business registering losses in 2018 and 2019, media reports said. In 2020, Japan’s total television production totaled 5.4 million units, industry data showed. The company’s numbers and the industry data reflected rapid inroads of Chinese and Korean televisions in the Japanese market, reflecting that Japan is fast losing its global competitiveness for consumer electrical products across the board.
Notwithstanding that, Panasonic’s decision is viewed as controversial as many western democracies are trying to retire their China manufacturing activities and shift to other economies.

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TOKYO, Dec. 8, 2021–Bureaucracy survival rests on the capacity for repeating and continuing what’s old as if new no matter whether they botched it in the past by rallying the big and and powerful. The Japanese government is going to do that from next year; it will revisit fostering dotcom unicorn businesses, its undertaking that flipped miserably in the pasts with hardly any results, by funneling government money into existing big Japanese businesses for their endeavors at new project startups.

METI, the trade ministry notoriously nationalistic and risk-averse, had come up with the idea of extending government finances to big Japanese businesses for their in-house startups and to independent unicorns that would rake in capital and human resources from big firms, according to recently Japanese media reports. The idea is presumed coined after the entrepreneur in residence concept long adopted by U.S. businesses, but the government is budgeting a ludicrously small 860 million yen ($8 million!!!) for it to help big businesses hire and retain 30-50 entrepreneurs (What?! Is that all?!).

Japan had 6 (Yes, six!) unicorns valued at more than $1 billion that have yet to go to IPOs as of this fall. The United States had 165.

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John Lennon’s Death And Harbor Attack Teach Us Peace’s Value

TOKYO, Dec. 8, 2021–John Lennon died on Dec. 8, 1980, a day after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor the Hawaii time previous day. Forty-one years and 80 years apart, the two tragedies are ingrained in me as lifetime lesson never to attack others and love peace. Concern is that countries and peoples around the world are headed in opposite directions, flexing muscles to attack others.

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TOKYO, Dec. 5, 2021—You can not underestimate China’s People Export sInitiative. They are all over the world, as we all know, as Chinese restauranteurs, massage and acupuncture therapists, boisterous tourists… At the current pace, they might take over the whole world over the next few decades. In Japan, resident Chinese now command the No. 1 population share among all legal foreign residents, the feat that they achieved in less than 5 years and almost doubling in 15 years. Several more decades forward, though, this may have to change.

The Japanese government Nov. 30 released details of its most recent census that showed that the number of resident Chinese in Japan in 2020 was 667,475, nearly double of 353,437 in 2005. And in 2010, Chinese dethroned Koreans as the largest legal resident bloc totaling 460,459, and representing nearly 30 percent of total resident foreigners, compared with 423,273 Koreans (of both South and North origins). Japan’s aggregate population in 2020 was 126.146 million, shrinking 0.7 percent and standing as the 11^th largest populous country in the world. Of the total, resident foreigners accounted for 2.747 million, growing 43.6 percent from 2015.

Will this Chinese people exports continue a long time? It may over the coming few decades in line with the Xi Jinping Belt and Road policy, but beyond that the trend starts looking iffy as China’s population aging is likely to progress, if not at Japan’s pace. In May, the Chinese national statistics bureau announced that people over 65 years old accounted for 13.5 percent of the 1.411 billion population while child birth plunged 20 percent from 2019. A Japanese government population research researcher was quoted by Nihon Keizai newspaper May 12, 2021 as predicting that China’s population growth is likely to peak before 2030. Chinese people over 65 years old totaled 190 million, an all-time high and up 60 percent from 2010. In 2016, China revised its one-child-per-family policy to allow couples to have two children, but as proved by Japan’s failure to increase births with many incentives, it has yielded little result.

Aging and population contraction is a reason why Xi accelerates BRI: He wants China to become a intellectual property giant to feed its aging population with royalty income from high speed railways, nuclear plants, and other giant tech projects it is selling to emerging countries.

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TOKYO, Dec. 5, 2021—How ignorant and illiterate is the Japanese bureaucracy about what’s happening in the rest of the world? Very, as epitomized by the Ministry of Justice’s use of TikTok for ‘human rights promotion.

A famous young personality Ketcup (ケチャップさん@mijingiri), posted a TikTok video on defamation and slander backed up by the ministry’s posting, #誰かのことじゃない #法務省 (This isn’t about someone else).

A growing number of Japanese are developing awareness about human rights abuses but the country is years backward as a whole, particularly bureaucrats and public sector officials who work according to decades-old work ethics and ethos, though superficial modernization is being introduced such as long work hour reductions and increasing female officer populations.

In a recent walk outside Tokyo, I’d spotted a hair salon whose shop name was ‘Kurombo (Nigger) with a painting of what looked like a black child on the shop name plaque.

TikTok is a Chinese developed SNS. Though not confirmed, it’s reportedly raking in personal data worldwide and much of it can be used by the Chinese government.

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TOKYO, Dec. 3, 2021–The global economy is set to barrel forward at a rapid pace –4.5% in 2022 and 3.2% in 2023, the OECD recently reported. Japan is forecast to craw at 3.4% and a measly 1.1%, less than half of other G” countries’ growth. If not by 2024, Korea, now the 11th economy, may eclipse Japan before 2030 in per capita GDP. Korea is projected to grow 3.0% and 2.7%. Why such slow growth? Rapid aging and population contraction is definitely an underlying factor but there are more, among them, stifling structural impediments and regulations, which are properties that make the Japanese bureaucracy happy for helping keep their comfy chairs.