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The only major Pacific nation in which Japan has been slow to invest is China. The two countries have 19 joint ventures, including factories in south China that make television sets and cassette tape players, but the total value of Japan's investments is only about $80 million. Japanese companies have many reasons to be skittish about China: uncomfortable living conditions, a complex government bureaucracy, lack of control over labor relations, the difficulty of repatriating profits, and unreliable power supplies. But as the business climate slowly improves, the Japanese will become more interested in what is potentially the world's largest market.
The Japanese have stirred some resentment in several Asian countries. Says Alunan Glang, a Filipino historian: "If we don't watch out, we Filipinos will no longer be known as 'little brown Americans,' but as 'little brown Japanese,' and God knows which is the lesser evil." In a speech last August, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed accused the Japanese of practicing "economic colonialism."
One charge leveled at Japan is that it uses cheap labor in other Asian countries but is unwilling to share technology. Says C.C. Chen, senior vice president of the International Commercial Bank of China in Taiwan: "What we need from foreign investment is not so much capital as access to technology. But the Japanese are not going to divulge any trade secrets, even to their joint-venture partners." When South Korea's President Chun Doo Hwan visited Tokyo last fall, he brought a shopping list of 47 technologies in industries ranging from textiles to computers. So far, Japanese companies have refused to license any of these techniques to the Koreans.
Asian countries, along with the U.S. and Western Europe, complain bitterly that Japan does not buy enough of their products. The Japanese piled up trade surpluses last year of about $1.7 billion with Thailand and $6 billion with Singapore. Student protesters in Thailand have circulated letters to their countrymen with a blunt warning: "Do not be a slave to Japanese goods." In his August speech, Malaysia's Mahathir noted that 84% of his nation's exports to Japan consisted of oil, wood, tin and other raw materials. Said he: "We cannot and will not remain merely hewers of wood and drawers of water." Japanese businessmen and farmers press for protection from imports just as hard as their counterparts in the U.S. Although Japan's tariffs are generally low, critics point out that the country has long maintained a maze of product standards, inspection procedures and testing requirements that effectively exclude many foreign goods. The government is sensitive to this charge, and since 1981 it has been dismantling such import barriers. No longer, for example, are all aerosol cans imported into Japan required to have precisely the same thickness.
But the roots of Japan's import phobia run deeper than its regulations. The Japanese are picky and often do not trust the quality of American products, much less Asian imports. Says Eric Hayden, an economist and a director of the Bank of America in Tokyo: "The Japanese are not going to take South Korean machine tools or Malaysian cars or Indonesian airplanes. Japan doesn't import that kind of stuff. The Japanese produce it, and better than any of these countries can."