Japan and the New World Order

by Rob Steven

Under today's world order, Japan's foreign investments, trade and financial activities are organised through networks. The multiple linkages among Japanese banks, industrial corporations and trading companies enable them to displace on to Asia some major domestic problems, especially the imbalance between Japan's tremendous productive power and its limited market capacity. Originally the surplus goods were exported to the USA and Europe, but the latter's power to refuse caused the yen to rise intolerably and Japan to look to Asia for comprehensive solutions. A new three-zone strategy requires production, marketing and finance to be tightly coordinated within each zone, but also an overall shift away from North America and Europe towards Asia, which is rapidly becoming not simply the main site of overseas production for Japanese companies but also their main overseas markets and borrowers.