Japan:
The World Trade Organization (WTO) confirmed on Dec. 15 that China has filed a complaint against U.S. chip export restrictions. But experts believe that the United States is increasingly suppressing Chinese chips, and Japan may also join. However, China will be hit by the ban on high-end chip technology, and Japan will face the challenge of operating the limited options under the U.S.-China strategy.
Japan's accession to the ban on China is of strategic significance:
The World Trade Organization confirmed on December 15 that China filed a complaint against U.S. chip export restrictions, accusing the United States of threatening global supply chain stability. In response, the United States insists that its export restrictions are in the interests of national security.
In early October this year, the Biden administration announced the most comprehensive chip export control measures for China in years, and actively attracted Taiwan, Japan, the Netherlands, and South Korea to join the anti-China camp.
Kyodo News quoted sources on December 10 as saying that U.S. Commerce Secretary Raimondo and Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasu Minoru Nishimura had asked Japan to respond to U.S. chip control measures against China during a telephone conversation on December 9. It is reported that this is the first time that Japanese and US ministerial-level officials have directly requested cooperation.
"Bloomberg" reported on December 12 that the United States has successfully persuaded Japan and the Netherlands to jointly impose export controls on Chinese semiconductors. It is reported that the two countries of Japan and the Netherlands will announce in the coming weeks that they will implement some of the chip bans offered by the United States in October, and the three-nation alliance of the United States, Japan and the Netherlands is expected to completely block China's ability to purchase equipment needed to manufacture cutting-edge chips.
Dr. Hsu Wenfu, former convener of the science and technology group of the Taiwan Professors Association and market consultant of French power system manufacturer SAFT, pointed out that from 2021 to 2023, 84 new wafer fabs will be built around the world, with an investment of up to 500 billion US dollars, of which 18 in the United States and 20 in China, but China's fabs are different from the advanced technologies below 20nm invested by countries such as the United States.
He told me: "The production equipment of semiconductor fabs around the world is mainly from three countries, the first is the United States, the second is the Netherlands, and the third is Japan. At present, this ban has been cast from the United States, banning their country's semiconductor equipment to China, and then the Netherlands has followed, and Japan should follow suit. So even if China's semiconductor factories will build 20, they are all mature processes with lower gross margins. The more advanced processes are like the United States, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and other regions. Therefore, Japan's joint participation in banning the export of advanced process equipment to China has great strategic significance.
Lu Xinji, executive director of the Japan-Korea Joint Cooperation Research Center of Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, said in an interview with Me that Japan's participation in sanctions represents support for the US sanctions policy under the hegemonic trading system led by the United States. As long as Japan has a certain proportion of industries in this industrial chain, it has its importance.
Satoshi Tachibana told Me: "Japan's semiconductor industry has lagged behind Taiwan and South Korea, and Japan's participation in sanctions actually does not suffer much economic losses, so it is better to push the boat along the water and win a little more in politics, why not?
Satoshi Tachibana said that even if Japan does not join the chip sanctions, it will not get important benefits from China, so it is impossible for Japan to fall to China and be completely anti-American. He believes that if Japan does not join the chip sanctions this time, the result will be that both sides are not flattering, making people inside and out.
He said: "There is actually no direct logical relationship between the United States and Japan re-establishing Japan's role in its semiconductor industry chain and Japan's relatively less critical role in the past." If the foreign media's information is correct, it is more important whether the United States, Japan and the Netherlands jointly block the proportion of the semiconductor supply chain in the future, or whether they have key technologies, or whether they have confidential technologies, which is the basis for the key evaluation of Japan's importance after joining the sanctions.
Japan's policy announcement may be a bargaining chip with China:
Kyodo News reported on December 10 that if Japan also imposes similar export control measures to China, it will inevitably trigger a strong backlash from Beijing, which may make it difficult to achieve specific policy cooperation between Japan and China.
Dr. Hsu Wenfu, former convener of the Science and Technology Group of the Taiwan Professors Association, believes that it is inevitable that the Japanese government will offend China based on the joint R&D program with the United States based on political factors.
Dr. Satoshi Tachibana, an expert in international management, said that capitalism is a Libreville field economy, so it is difficult for politics to completely control the economy. China is a one-party dictatorship, so the "zero" policy can be maintained for a long time, but other democracies cannot, such as Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, there is pressure from the corporate financial circles, democratic countries have elections, and the economy will counter politics.
Lu Xinji, executive director of the Japan-Korea Joint Cooperation Research Center at Taiwan's Chung Hsing University, said that Beijing's strong backlash will inevitably be in Japan's consideration of whether it is willing to cooperate with the US sanctions plan, and it is impossible to simply judge which side Japan leans on in the strategic choice. In dynamic international trade negotiations, Japan could even use current policy declarations as bargaining chips with the next party.
Lu Xinji said: "On the whole, in the case of pure international trade, Japan must be able to estimate this profit-loss ratio between costs and gains." However, how to properly operate the options under the US-China strategy, such as policy declarations in favor of the US sanctions policy, but in fact through other subsidies or specific operations of reinvestment policy, to avoid China's harsh criticism, and even losses in short-term trade, in exchange for this political commitment in the medium and long term, are all things that leaders and leadership teams must think about in the face of the ruling policies and the pressure of the international system. ”
Lu Xinji pointed out that if Japan-China policy cooperation is difficult to achieve, what can be exchanged is closer cooperation with the United States, which may lead to a shift in the Japanese government.
"The biggest reason is that the United States and Japan are about to jointly develop the next generation of semiconductor infrastructure, and this plan will allow Japan and the United States to cooperate in the research and development of two-nanometer process technology, which is rumored to cost as much as 350 billion yen," he said. This part is the main reason why the Japanese semiconductor industry or the Japanese government needs to direct the Sino-US semiconductor race. In addition to this part, the United States and Japan will also have more diplomatic, military, and even political combinations to respond to the direction of Japan's more advanced plan to block China's semiconductor industry by joining the ranks of the United States and the Netherlands.”
Xu Wenfu pointed out that China's complaint to the World Trade Organization about the ban issued by the United States should be ineffective, because the ban issued by the United States is based on national security reasons, and Japan will inevitably put national security issues above Japan-China economic cooperation.
"What is the U.S. doing now? Is it to use the 'seeing hand' to manage the 'invisible hand', can it be controlled? It may be possible to control some, but not all; It may be possible to manage the short-term, but not the long-term. We often say Chinese mainland 'there are policies and countermeasures', but in fact, the world is the same everywhere, politics dominates the economy, and if that is contrary to economic principles, there will be a backlash at the economic level.”
Tachibana pointed out that even the CCP finally could not stand the economic pressure and gave up the complete "zero" policy, so it is difficult to predict how long the chip regulation in the United States can last.
Japanese experts doubt the effectiveness of the ban:
The Financial Times reported on December 10 that Japanese senior technicians believe that the US chip ban on China will not be too effective.
It is reported that Hiromaki Kitano, head of technology at Sony of Japan, believes that the US chip sanctions against China will only briefly affect China's chip procurement, but cannot curb China's growth momentum in the field of artificial intelligence. He also believes that the export restrictions of semiconductor products and devices in the United States will not have a long-term impact on China. Takayuki Morita, president of Nippon Electric, has the same doubt, he believes that the blockade of Chinese semiconductors may weaken China's chip research and development capabilities in the short term and prevent the PLA from easily obtaining advanced military semiconductors. However, it can only achieve short-term restrictions, and it is difficult to continue to restrict China's semiconductor development in the long term. Takayuki Morita said that the Chinese government has vigorously developed semiconductors, making China's semiconductor companies more and more competitive.
Dr. Xu Wenfu, market consultant of French power system manufacturer SAFT, said that in order to develop its semiconductor industry, China has invested up to 850 billion yuan, which is indeed a considerable growth rate, but because high-end chip research and development needs to rely on foreign imports, the chip ban issued by the United States will severely dampen China's semiconductor technology improvement.
Lu Xinji, executive director of the Japan-Korea Center for Joint Participation at
Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, believes that the factors that the industry must measure are significantly different from the political and diplomatic fields, and business leaders bet on the risk of making profits now and in the future. It is not the same as the entry point for politicians who must look at the overall situation and affect their political careers.
Dr. Satoshi Tachibana, founder of
Whiriss Japan Consulting, believes that under capitalism, the state's control over enterprises is limited, and the control of enterprises over individuals is also limited. He pointed out that the Russian-Ukrainian war is entangled in the energy industry, oil and gas, which is basically out of control at the individual level, and it is difficult for enterprises to fully control it. But semiconductor chips are completely different, companies and individuals can control a great degree, as long as China provides superior conditions, technology outflow is inevitable, perhaps consider changing the foothold.
Xu Wenfu said: "Indeed, China's full fund investment has also allowed China's semiconductors to grow from zero to one-third of what they are now, but if you want to go to advanced processes, you must import some of their very advanced equipment from the United States, the Netherlands, and Japan." Therefore, China does face an incomplete challenge in developing advanced processes. Even with the efforts of the whole country, it is difficult to develop such equipment in a short period of time.
"The industry may have options for absolute interests such as preemption, merger or competition, but from the government's point of view, there may only be options for relative interests such as restriction, comparison or competition," he said. As a result, there are many cases where the industry cannot fully cooperate with government policies. On the contrary, from the perspective of the government, how to persuade enterprises to implement policies that avoid violating the national interest depends on the actions under various proportional principles such as moral norms and persuasion, legal restrictions and enforcement, or intervention through coercive force.
"The United States said, 'You China can't do this and not play by the rules of the game'; China said, 'This is the rules of the game you set, I have my set of rules of the game'. That's the essence of the problem. Therefore, the dispute between the United States and China is a dispute over the right to make the rules of the game. The United States and the West are the only ones that can set the rules of the game, and we tend to talk about things within this premise and framework, but now the essence of the problem has shifted to another level. If we change our footing a little, many problems will be solved.”
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