Some time ago, I read a similar article "The West is Repeating the Mistakes of the Soviet Union", which talks about the difference between the planned economy and the market economy in the layout of the global economic and trade system.
During the Cold War between the two camps, the Soviet Union adopted the model of a planned economy to establish a transnational economic and trade organization centered on the Soviet Union.
The planned economy was very efficient in the beginning, but this system is slow to iterate, and as reality changes, it becomes more and more inefficient.
On the other hand, the West has established larger and larger economic and trade circles, and adopted the complementary advantages of various countries, so as to eliminate the advantages of the other.
Now the West, especially the United States, is forcing the construction of "small courtyards and high walls" by the most advanced means.
Forcing the country and related countries to choose a less efficient ** chain is a typical planned economic model.
But this model is incompatible with the liberal economic model to which the West has been accustomed for centuries, and is even more unsustainable than the Soviet Union's use of the planning model.
More interestingly, the West is also repeating Japan's mistakes.
This may surprise you and feel that this is nonsense, after all, over the years, various experts on the Internet have often compared Japan with China.
What is the "balance sheet recession theory", the possibility of a re-occurrence of industrial relocation in Japan, etc.
This has led to fears that India, Vietnam and other countries will replace China's position in the global industrial chain.
However, an abnormal country, an island country with a population of only 100 million and a lack of resources, can have a certain reference value.
But it is somewhat confusing to cling to a great power with a history of thousands of years and a head-on confrontation with all the other P5 that has won.
Or think about it from an industrial perspective.
Japan's "Lost Thirty Years" since 1989 is a very significant manifestation of this: in terms of end products, the giants that can be named are still 30 years ago.
Note that the simplest criterion for being able to get a terminal product is that the product can independently meet a certain consumer demand.
For example, cars, mobile phones, computers, TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, cameras, etc., these are all end products.
Think about it, no matter how high the level of chip technology is, can consumers meet their consumption needs when they get a few chips?
Obviously, it can't, so what is sold to the final consumer must be a complete product.
A country's industrial system must be marketed through the final product, otherwise it will be incomplete and will lose the initiative.
This is very important, think about how many end products in Japan in the last century have a "Japanese faith"?
In 1989, there were 32 Japanese companies in the top 50 companies in the world by market capitalization.
As shown in the figure below, excluding the financial and public service categories, there are 6 companies such as Toyota, Hitachi, Panasonic, Toshiba, Nissan, and Mitsubishi in terms of terminal products.
And now you are safe?
In the top 50 in 2022, there is only one Toyota left, and the ranking is still declining;
In 2018, it was still ranked 35th;
In 2022, it will be 36;
In the next few years, Toyota's ranking will continue to decline, and it is not unusual to fall out of the top 50.
Japan's lost 30 years are inseparable from the decline of end-product companies, and it is the inevitable result of the Japanese model.
Japan is a country that likes to eat alone very much, and the concept of hierarchy is extremely heavy, and it has established a first-class chain system around the core enterprises, which is extremely stable.
In the wave of globalization that began in the 90s of the last century, Japan still stubbornly stuck to its own territory and rejected the global division of labor.
But Japan is too small, with a population of 100 million, and such a rigid and refusal to integrate into a global system means that it is extremely slow to iterate.
The sluggishness of each link and each component may not seem obvious, but in the end, it is concentrated on the end product, and the competitive loss caused by this slow iteration is visible to the naked eye.
As a result, the core terminal product companies represented by Hitachi and Panasonic have been retreating.
It is gradually replaced by latecomer brands such as South Korea and China.
Behind every terminal enterprise, there is a whole chain, which is a large number of parts manufacturers, material suppliers, technology providers and so on.
The decline of terminal enterprises has led to the need for these second-tier and even third-tier enterprises to directly face fierce international competition.
Although some victories can be achieved locally, defeat is inevitable.
To give an easy example: the game between the manufacturing industries of the two countries is like a war between the two countries.
Normal warfare is, of course, the regular armies of the two countries forming military formations to fight on the battlefield.
These corps are manufacturers of end products such as Toyota and Hitachi, but the war is precisely about logistics.
From ancient times to the present, the scale of logistics support is much higher than that of the participating regiments, and these logistics support are the best suppliers of spare parts.
And what supports these logistical support is the hinterland of a country, which is the grain farmers, the iron ore digging workers, the local **, and so on.
In manufacturing, it is like a business provider that provides the necessary tools and materials.
Front-line corps: the first supplier of terminal products;
Logistics support: parts and components suppliers;
Local hinterland: equipment, tools, materials ** business.
Now the regiments at the forefront of a country are losing and even mostly being wiped out, leaving only a few superior regiments.
Then the regular army of another country can strike directly at the logistics of this country.
Even enter the hinterland of the country and directly hit farmland and mines, think about how devastating this is?
The fighting in the manufacturing industry is certainly not as cruel as the battlefield, and it is somewhat slow and sharp, but the reason is similar.
Let's take some well-known examples, such as a TV or a monitor.
How strong Toshiba and Panasonic TVs were back then, the word "Sony**" is still fresh in my memory.
Supporting the invincibility of the Toshiba Army and the Panasonic Army is Japan's extremely developed ** chain system.
However, due to Japan's rigid internal division of labor, it rejects the global division of labor.
As a result, the iteration of end products is too slow, and the cost performance is getting lower and lower.
Eventually, it was heavily replaced by Chinese brands.
So it was Japan's turn to provide logistics, that is, the panel manufacturer directly faced the frontal attack of the Chinese display corps.
Of course, due to technological advantages, such as Sharp, which bets on LCD panels, still made huge gains, especially in 2014, which is amazing.
But soon, with the support of China's display terminal brand, China's own panel companies rose rapidly.
For example, BOE.
In any case, China's internal ** chain is always better to negotiate and the cost is lower, and the rapid iteration of local panel companies has also strongly supported the rise of Chinese display brands.
What happened after Sharp?
China once again defeated the logistics support of Japanese panel companies in a few years with faster iteration and lower cost.
As a result, the hinterland of Japan is facing a direct attack, specifically the upstream material companies that produce LCD panels, such as "ITO film".
At present, Japan still has some advantages in this area.
But they have all been beaten to the mainland by the regular armies of other countries, and what is the point of saying that they have strong resistance?
No matter how good ITO film is, it can't be sold to consumers alone.
China's own display brands and its own panel manufacturers must be more inclined to choose China's own upstream material companies.
Not to mention national feelings, nor to talk about the security of the chain in the context of the war, the logic of commercial costs also requires this.
Therefore, some people are still saying that Toyota is still very powerful, and it is still the world's No. 1 car company.
Three of the top 10 car brands in Southeast Asia are Japanese brands and so on.
This is really a rigid cognition of carving a boat to seek a sword, and I don't realize the essence of the problem at all.
The essence of this is:
When one country's regular army has been defeated, and the logistics support system and the local hinterland are threatened by another country's regular army, who has the advantage?
Why is the West repeating Japan's mistakes?
The essence is similar. The reason for the decline of terminal brands in Japan is that only one of the world's top 50 companies remains.
It also fell from 11th place in 1989 to 36th place in 2022, and the next step is to accelerate the recession.
A very important reason is that the Japanese ** chain is too rigid and refuses to embrace the global division of labor, resulting in its own iteration being too slow.
What's more serious is that such a small system, in the face of a more complex human industrial system, can only support a chain-like fragile ** chain, which is characterized by "gambling on national fortune".
For example, new energy vehicles, as early as the 90s of the last century, the world has been very clear about the possible road to the industrialization of automobiles in the future.
Three directions: pure electric, hybrid, fuel cell.
China's choice is to take it all, while Japan is only betting on the hydrogen branch in the fuel cell direction.
It is true that a very strong hydrogen energy vehicle chain system has been established, involving more than 20 sub-categories, and Japanese companies have a great advantage and have become an iron bucket array.
These participating companies are all subsidiaries that followed Toyota in the past, and can be understood as serving the logistics support and local ** of the Toyota Corps.
But with the exception of Japan, all other countries are focusing on pure electric and hybrid vehicles.
Is it possible for Japan to spread hydrogen to the world on its own?
Apparently a dream.
China's choice of all means that a mesh chain structure has been established, which is completely different from the traditional single-chain chain of fuel vehicles in the past.
And this network structure is not only directly related to the car, in the future, with the automotive intelligence as the carrier, it can also include more other people.
How can this be fought?
The problems faced by Western countries are similar to those of Japan, and only the United States has a larger population and industrial scale than Japan.
However, the United States has a population of more than 300 million, and the scale of physical manufacturing is shrinking day by day.
Although high-end innovation is still strong, once innovation leaves the soil of physical manufacturing, it is like a tree losing its soil.
Europe looks big, but after all, it is not a whole, and now Russia has been denied a Western identity.
China's highly developed industrial system, supported by 1.4 billion people, means the most drastic iteration in the world.
From the perspective of specific brands and individuals, the competitive pressure is extremely high.
But on the whole, it means a rapid increase in combat effectiveness.
It also means that any industry or brand that is outside of China will gradually decline, although this decline is only relative to China.
For example, Apple engages in the so-called diversification of the Apple ** chain, we do have losses, but Apple has no losses?
Industry is not only about technology, the core is production capacity and **.
Apple's latest Vision Pro sold for 30,000 yuan, does Apple want to be so noble?
Isn't it because of the loss of the support of China's ** chain, it can only be so expensive.
Because Apple itself also has to consider the uncertain policy of the United States, it is afraid that it has established a product system based on China's first chain, and it will have to be overhauled later.
If Vision Pro can be reduced to less than 10,000, the significance of this for the promotion of Apple products is self-evident.
Just like Tesla, the reason why it has today is all due to China's strong ** chain.
Finally, let's end with new energy vehicles.
In the past few days, Europe and the United States have been targeting China's new energy vehicles, what investigations, bans, it looks quite bluffing.
But there is a problem, just like the United States, which did not let China's new energy vehicles sell before, it is just to pick the bright side.
The world is not only in Europe, the United States, and Japan, but once there are changes in East Asia, it is not certain which side Japan and South Korea will stand on.
But this means that countries such as the United States and Europe are isolated from China's first-class chain system.
Just like Japan back then, it guarded its own local ** chain and refused to globalize the division of labor.
It will only lead to the slow iteration speed and poor competitiveness of its own end products.
In the end, the present of Japan is the tomorrow of Europe and the United States.
So, Apple announced that it was withdrawing from its electric car plans, and the stock price went up, which is a smart move.
In the year 2024, when the cards are fiercely reshuffled, if you can't integrate into China's ** chain, you will not only get twice the result on your own.
It is likely that no matter how much you invest, you will have to waste it.
It's better to wait, wait for this round of reshuffle to end, and wait for the U.S. policy to stabilize.
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