2/26/2014

The economic consequences of China's military threats

On the one hand, China is comparing the Shinzo Abe, Japan's Prime Minister, to Kim Jong Un, North Korea's nutty leader.  On the other, China is playing chicken with military jets in the South China Sea.   China's military threats against Japan are discouraging Japan's investment there.  The probability of something happening may still not be high, but the risk to those investments if war started would be huge.  The Bangkok Post has this:
On top of this, the sheer size and integration of the economies — China and Japan are the world’s second- and third-largest economies, respectively — makes the relationship hard to ignore.  
Japan has 23,000 companies operating in China, with 10 million Chinese workers on their payrolls. But Japanese companies are actively diversifying away from China now, with foreign direct investment waning and Japan shifting to Southeast Asia in particular.  
China-South Korea trade is fast approaching the levels of China-Japan trade as a result of fallout from tensions between Tokyo and Beijing. If the Chinese and Japanese start thinking their economic relationship is deteriorating, the potential for confrontation grows. . . .

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