- 2018-09-26
Japan's economy is bittersweet
For Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, 2017 is undoubtedly a year full of "thrills". Abe, who had been caught in the Moriyu Gakuen and Kaike Gakuen scandals since the beginning of the year, did not go well in the second half of the year: Although Abe held the Japanese general election ahead of schedule and was re-elected, Abe's approval rating has remained low since then.
At the same time, Japanese companies are also in distress. The counterfeit incident of Kobe Steel in Japan that was exposed in October last year continued to ferment, implicating many industries around the world, and the reputation of Japan's manufacturing industry fell to the bottom. However, for the Japanese economy, 2017 is still full of hope, especially since the second half of the year, the economic data released by the Japanese government has been improving, which also supported the outstanding performance of the Japanese stock market.
Frequent policies
According to the latest national poll released by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun on December 19, 2017, the Abe cabinet’s approval rate was 41%, a decrease of 3 percentage points from the previous month, and the disapproval rate was 38%. Among them, supporters of "looks better than other political parties" accounted for about 47%, nearly half. The poll also evaluated the performance of Shinzo Abe in the past five years after he came to power for the second time. The final result was 5.2 points (out of 10 points), and 5 points are passing points.
Abe, who has gradually lost the hearts of the people in politics, is trying to make a recovery at the economic level. Since 2017, despite the global tightening of monetary policy, the Abe government has maintained a quantitative easing policy and introduced a number of livelihood policies.
Liu Yun, a visiting researcher at the Japanese Research Institute of Nankai University, pointed out that since 2017, the Abe government has focused on promoting the implementation of the "Abenomics Third Arrow", which includes increasing social welfare, promoting women’s employment, part of children’s enrollment in kindergarten and free university education. Educational Revolution" and other policies. At the same time, Abe is also expanding the new focus of "Abenomics", especially in the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, and financial technology innovation.
After the U.S. tax reform, the Abe administration also began to reduce corporate tax rates. At the beginning of December 2017, the Japanese government passed a new round of economic stimulus package with a scale of 2 trillion yen. One of the main contents is to give tax cuts to companies that actively raise wages, invest and innovate. The relevant policies will focus on Complete before 2020.
Liu Yun pointed out that Japan's tax reform plan is linked to the salary increase policy. Prior to this, the Abe government has been pushing companies, especially large companies, to raise wages, but with little success. Data show that in 2016, the retained earnings of Japanese companies reached 406 trillion yen, a record high. At the same time, the proportion of labor expenses has dropped to 63%, the lowest in recent years.
Since 2017, the book income of large Japanese companies has increased sharply. According to the "Nihon Keizai Shimbun" statistics, as of the end of September 2017, the retained earnings of about 3,500 listed companies in Japan totaled 260 trillion yen, and about 56% of the corporate retained earnings reached a record high, an increase of 8 trillion days from the end of 2016. Yuan, an increase of 86 trillion yen from the end of 2007 before the financial crisis broke out.
Liu Yun pointed out that Japan’s current tax reform explicitly mentions raising wages and increasing equipment investment as conditions in order to resolve the contradiction between high retained earnings and no increase in wages.
Hidden worries
The economic growth forecast issued by the Japanese government on December 19, 2017 showed that its growth forecast for fiscal year 2017 was raised to 1.9% from the previous 1.5%, and the growth forecast for fiscal year 2018 was raised to 1.8% from the previous 1.4%.
In addition, according to the revised value of gross domestic product (GDP) for the third quarter of 2017 released by the Cabinet Office of Japan, the actual growth rate after excluding price changes is 0.6% month-on-month, which is equivalent to an annual growth rate of 2.5%, and it has continued positive growth for 7 quarters. , Setting a record for the longest growth since the second quarter of 1994.
These data show that, driven by the recovery of the world economy, the Japanese economy is also showing a momentum of recovery.
However, the Japanese economy faces more problems. Liu Yun pointed out that, on the one hand, the aging society has led to a serious shortage of labor in Japan, and Japanese companies have frequently failed to hire employees. Unlike the huge consumer markets owned by the United States and Europe, the Japanese market is close to saturation, which makes Japanese companies more willing to invest in overseas markets.
On the other hand, in the second half of 2017, many Japanese manufacturing giants exposed counterfeiting scandals, which faded the once glorious Japanese manufacturing aura, and Japan's long-term reputation for quality and integrity is being hit.
Bai Ming, deputy director and researcher of the Institute of International Market Research of the Ministry of Commerce, pointed out that the Japanese economy is built on the basis of manufacturing, and the "selling point" of Japanese manufacturing in the international promotion is quality, integrity and product precision. The manufacturing scandal in Japan will indeed have an impact on the image of Japan’s manufacturing industry. Especially in this Kobe Steel fraud incident, Kobe Steel is widely used in important fields such as high-speed rail, aerospace, and automobiles. The fraud incident will definitely have an impact on Japanese manufacturing and related industries. However, we should face up to the fact that this does not change the reality that the level of sophistication and research and development of Japan's manufacturing industry is much higher than that of many countries.
In addition, high debt is also plagued by Japan's economic growth. In order to stimulate economic recovery, the Japanese government has launched a number of economic stimulus plans in recent years. At the same time, the aging problem continues to increase the burden of social security, which has caused the Japanese government's fiscal expenditure to continue to increase. At present, the Japanese government's tax revenue is only enough to maintain two-thirds of the state's fiscal expenditure. As of June 2017, Japan's total national and local debt reached 1078 trillion yen, equivalent to twice the GDP, and the fiscal situation is grim.