Japan economics thread.

gadgetcool5

Senior Member
Registered Member
Since someone pointed out that the other thread Japan/Korea should be split out, let me start a new thread focused on Japan.

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Here is an interesting tidbit on a Nikkei Asia article on Mitsubishi Heavy industries suspending SpaceJet:

"The company also faces headwinds in core operations. Fossil-fuel-fired power plants, which account for around 60% of group operating profit, are under growing pressure over their environmental impact. Shipbuilding operations face challenges as well. Mitsubishi Heavy has little resources to spend on a project that may not succeed financially."
 

ansy1968

Brigadier
Registered Member
Since someone pointed out that the other thread Japan/Korea should be split out, let me start a new thread focused on Japan.

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Here is an interesting tidbit on a Nikkei Asia article on Mitsubishi Heavy industries suspending SpaceJet:

"The company also faces headwinds in core operations. Fossil-fuel-fired power plants, which account for around 60% of group operating profit, are under growing pressure over their environmental impact. Shipbuilding operations face challenges as well. Mitsubishi Heavy has little resources to spend on a project that may not succeed financially."
Hi gadgetcool5,

From me, I think like the US the semiconductor area is the only remaining sector where Japan is competitive, If its a big if Japan stay on course and cooperate with China by supplying equipment. It will remain so. Japan need its mojo back, they were supreme during the 80's, they need to unshackled themselves from US diktat and focus on its own interest.
 

OppositeDay

Senior Member
Registered Member
Hi gadgetcool5,

From me, I think like the US the semiconductor area is the only remaining sector where Japan is competitive, If its a big if Japan stay on course and cooperate with China by supplying equipment. It will remain so. Japan need its mojo back, they were supreme during the 80's, they need to unshackled themselves from US diktat and focus on its own interest.

Outside the semiconductor industry, both U.S. and Japan are well ahead of China in pharmaceuticals and medical devices manufacturing, two highly profitable industries. The future of pharmaceuticals might look less bright as it seems we've already picked most low hanging fruits, but China really should improve its advanced medical devices manufacturing industry.

I think after the covid-19 crisis a lot of countries will want to build their domestics medical supplies/devices supply chains. It would be a golden opportunity for China to do the same and push for local advanced medical devices industry.
 

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
If China didn't manufacture medical devices how come there is all this talk about ventilators from China?
Are these foreign companies manufacturing in China or what?

With regards to the SpaceJet, well, I prefer to call it the MRJ (Mitsubishi Regional Jet) which is the original name.
I do not know the details of what happened, the reason for the delays, but the project was highly ambitious. It used the most modern composite material technology for example. It was started years before the 787 or the A350. Yet those airplanes are flying and this is not.
AFAIK the Canadians started work on the CSeries after the MRJ and it was much less ambitious. It did not use composites as much.
But the Canadians had more experience with prior aircraft.
Didn't Mitsubishi recently acquire the Bombardier turboprop division? The one which manufactured the Dash-8? What happens with that?

It is not like Japan cannot design aircraft. Just look at the Kawasaki P-1 and C-2. Even the Mitsubishi F-2 used a lot of composites.
The much vaunted F-22 composite construction was a rip-off of the F-2 and in fact the US still imports Japanese composites to this day.
Many of the advances in the F-22 were present in the F-2 prior. Composite construction, AESA radar, etc.
 

gadgetcool5

Senior Member
Registered Member
Hunting for unicorns: Japan startup scene

There are nearly 500 unicorns worldwide, from Silicon Valley rental giant Airbnb Inc. to ByteDance, TikTok's Beijing-based parent company.

But only four of these firms are Japanese, according to the latest list compiled by U.S. analytics platform CB Insights.

"Relative to its GDP, Japan should have at least 50 to 60 unicorns," said Gen Isayama, head of World Innovation Lab, a California-based company that provides advice and capital to startups with a focus on Japan.

"In Japan, innovation efforts have always been led by big corporations," he explained, with banks "more willing to loan money to these corporates rather than to invest in startup companies."

Japan's venture-capital market, worth around $4 billion last year, is much smaller than the United States' at $137 billion and China's at $52 billion, according to several studies.

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gadgetcool5

Senior Member
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FWIW, here is the unicorn list:

U.S. - 238
China - 122
Europe - 36
UK, Australia, Canada & New Zealand - 27
India - 24
East Asia (excl. China) - 24
Latin America - 11 (7 Brazil)
Middle East - 9 (7 Israel)
Africa - 2 (both South Africa)
Source: CB Insights

Excluding China, non-Western entities are pathetic.
 

OppositeDay

Senior Member
Registered Member
If China didn't manufacture medical devices how come there is all this talk about ventilators from China?
Are these foreign companies manufacturing in China or what?

I was talking about advanced medical devices. Ventilators are not advanced. Remember China had to import ECMO machines from Germany at the start of the pandemic? China can't produce them.
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
I was talking about advanced medical devices. Ventilators are not advanced. Remember China had to import ECMO machines from Germany at the start of the pandemic? China can't produce them.

It might be true in the past But recent expansion of health care and new regulation certainly benefit the domestic medical device industry China has robust medical device industry and it is getting more sophisticated with each year No china now can make ECMO machine here it is
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A medical technology company in East China's Jiangsu Province independently developed China's first domestically-produced portable ECMO system, which has begun the registration process.

The Saiteng OASSIST ECMO system was developed by Jiangsu Saiteng Medical Technology Co in Suzhou Industrial Park. The pre-charge amount of the pump head of the system is smaller with more even flow field compared with other ECMO machines, media reports said.

This is also the only domestic ECMO system in China that has begun the registration process.

So far, the OASSIST ECMO system has finished several animal trials successfully.

The system marks an opportunity for China to break free from its long-term dependence on importing these life-saving machines.

"Generally speaking, entering the registration process means there is great hope for the country to manufacture domestically-made ECMO machines in future," Xu Jiarui, director at the research center of a professional sub-device under China Association for Medical Devices Industry, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Here is the stand of Chinese device industry
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like
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has decreased from 33.3% in 2016 to 31.1% in 2018. At the same time, Chinese medical device producers Mindray, valued at 9 billion RMB ($1.28 billion) in 2016 and 13.7 billion RMB ($1.95 billion) in 2018, are enjoying larger market shares due to a host of favorable financial and trade policies which fall under the broad umbrella of
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
(MIC 2025).

Already several Chinese provinces have taken the first steps toward realizing Beijing’s ambitions through procurement and insurance policies which preference domestic producers over foreign imports.

In 2018, state hospitals in
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
province were required to procure domestically produced devices in 15 categories or risk losing out on lucrative state-insurance reimbursements. In 2019, provinces and major cities across China released a series of increasingly restrictive
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. Ningxia province was first to release a notice requiring state hospitals to justify any foreign medical device imports with a lengthy audit. Suzhou and Tianjin, major economic hubs, soon followed suit with identical notices. Not to be outdone, Shandong province limited all device imports to only 488 items, mainly high tech diagnostic devices not produced in China. Zhejiang province soon after limited state hospital imports to 232 items.


These restrictive policies are a double-edged sword. They benefit China’s medical device industry by insulating it from foreign competition while also forcing hospitals to expend resources searching for products which comply with changing regulations and which, in some cases, may be of lesser quality than foreign alternatives. These policies also have become tests of officials’ loyalty to the party whose industrial policy is inseparable from its aspirations to become a great power on par with the United States.
 

OppositeDay

Senior Member
Registered Member
It might be true in the past But recent expansion of health care and new regulation certainly benefit the domestic medical device industry China has robust medical device industry and it is getting more sophisticated with each year No china now can make ECMO machine here it is
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
A medical technology company in East China's Jiangsu Province independently developed China's first domestically-produced portable ECMO system, which has begun the registration process.

The Saiteng OASSIST ECMO system was developed by Jiangsu Saiteng Medical Technology Co in Suzhou Industrial Park. The pre-charge amount of the pump head of the system is smaller with more even flow field compared with other ECMO machines, media reports said.

This is also the only domestic ECMO system in China that has begun the registration process.

So far, the OASSIST ECMO system has finished several animal trials successfully.

The system marks an opportunity for China to break free from its long-term dependence on importing these life-saving machines.

"Generally speaking, entering the registration process means there is great hope for the country to manufacture domestically-made ECMO machines in future," Xu Jiarui, director at the research center of a professional sub-device under China Association for Medical Devices Industry, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Here is the stand of Chinese device industry
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
like
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
has decreased from 33.3% in 2016 to 31.1% in 2018. At the same time, Chinese medical device producers Mindray, valued at 9 billion RMB ($1.28 billion) in 2016 and 13.7 billion RMB ($1.95 billion) in 2018, are enjoying larger market shares due to a host of favorable financial and trade policies which fall under the broad umbrella of
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
(MIC 2025).

Already several Chinese provinces have taken the first steps toward realizing Beijing’s ambitions through procurement and insurance policies which preference domestic producers over foreign imports.

In 2018, state hospitals in
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
province were required to procure domestically produced devices in 15 categories or risk losing out on lucrative state-insurance reimbursements. In 2019, provinces and major cities across China released a series of increasingly restrictive
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
. Ningxia province was first to release a notice requiring state hospitals to justify any foreign medical device imports with a lengthy audit. Suzhou and Tianjin, major economic hubs, soon followed suit with identical notices. Not to be outdone, Shandong province limited all device imports to only 488 items, mainly high tech diagnostic devices not produced in China. Zhejiang province soon after limited state hospital imports to 232 items.


These restrictive policies are a double-edged sword. They benefit China’s medical device industry by insulating it from foreign competition while also forcing hospitals to expend resources searching for products which comply with changing regulations and which, in some cases, may be of lesser quality than foreign alternatives. These policies also have become tests of officials’ loyalty to the party whose industrial policy is inseparable from its aspirations to become a great power on par with the United States.

The new ECMO system still hasn't been approved but yes it's a sign of progress.

Government interventions are needed for domestic products to break into the market. State hospitals otherwise have no incentives to switch to domestic products since they are spending public money and career-wise it's safest to keep on buying foreign products even if they're expensive.
 
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