The rise and fall of a country is always accompanied by economic prosperity and decline.
If we look at it over a longer period of time, Japan’s GDP has been fluctuating between US$4 trillion and US$6 trillion since the end of the last century.
In the world GDP ranking, Japan has remained second all year round. Until it was surpassed by China in 2010, it still ranked third. Even in 2019, Japan's GDP was one trillion US dollars higher than that of fourth-place Germany.
A closer comparison will reveal that Japan's economy is not bad and still occupies an important part of the world's industrial system. Without China for comparison, it would even be considered strong.
Japan's "weakness" also depends on who it is compared to.
However, Japan’s share of global GDP has been declining, from about 15% in 1991 to about 6% in 2019.
China's GDP increased from 1.6% in 1991 to about 16% in 2019. Just ten years later, Japan's GDP was only slightly more than one-third of China's.
Thirty years ago, no Chinese would dare to dream of this!
Many people are asking, how did China get to this point?
Watanabe Oo and the old people behind him experienced Japan's economic rise after World War II, and would not have thought that they would have to go through a similar process again when they grow old.
Only this time it's not in Japan.
"Watanabe-san, who was that just now...?" An older social worker or a senior of Watanabe was qualified to ask questions on his own initiative.
After being stimulated repeatedly, Qin Hao almost exploded on the spot and jumped away in anger.
"Don't worry, you're an idiot." Watanabe shook his head, "Everyone, you are here. This building is the headquarters of the Holy Light, and you will start a new life here."
A few days ago, a group of old community workers didn't even know that a place like Tianyang existed. They had all recently lost their jobs, their houses had been taken away by the bank, their savings and pensions were all gone, and they had to live in hotels.
Not a single piece of news in the media is good, and every day we hear news of someone committing suicide. They hide in fear for fear of bumping into the 'Yakuza' who come to collect debts.
Japanese society is already under great pressure, and no one is immune to this kind of nationwide economic collapse. Everyone's mood is even more gloomy.
Coming to Tianyang was not a well-thought-out idea. The old commune people wanted to escape more and it would be nice to leave Japan.
At most, some people fled to Southeast Asia, South Korea, Europe and the United States, and they were contacted by Watanabe Ou.
This group of people drifted on the smuggling ship for several days, and immediately boarded the plane after arriving in Hong Kong. They were like lost dogs along the way, with no time to think about the next step.
It was only now, when Watanabe said, "We've arrived," that a few people felt relieved and had the mood to take a look at their current situation. They bowed to Watanabe and shouted, "I've caused you trouble."
Vice President Watanabe himself could not help but sigh. A person's fate could take a big turn so easily. Is there anything more bizarre in the world than this?
I'm afraid there are very few.
If 'Holy Light' wants to expand its scale, Zhou Qingfeng's simple and crude management style in the past will not work. He cannot eliminate problems within the group like dealing with dissidents, and must let professionals do the job.
Watanabe did a good job at the battery factory and was quickly promoted to the position of vice president.
Zhou Qingfeng has no other way to do this, because he really has no qualified management talents. Not Xiao Jinlang, not Zheng Ping, not Lin Wan, not Huang Oriole, not even Ouyang Jun and Gong Wei.
But after Watanabe became vice president, he also faced new difficulties.
The current business of 'Holy Light' is quite big, including production, sales, smuggling, and a lot of other things. Now it also involves foreign trade with the Soviet Union. The difficulty of management has skyrocketed.
Staying in the vice president's office, Watanabe's role is not as big as that of the battery factory. Local cadres have not been trained, and the employees below cannot see Watanabe's ruthless character, and there is a tendency to gradually let sheep go.
Zhou Qingfeng was really angry with the workers on the production line. They were just like the indigenous soldiers from another world. As soon as they were out of sight of the managers, they would immediately take advantage of the situation and cut corners.
In modern industrial products, the number of turns of a screw is very particular.
Good craftsmanship can 'turn decay into magic', while bad craftsmanship can 'turn magic into decay'. If front-line employees behave randomly, Zhou Qingfeng will be on pins and needles in the president's office.
There is no way, if one Watanabe is not enough, just bring in a few more Watanabes. If a few are not enough, just bring in dozens. No matter whether he is an old Japanese or a young Japanese, he is a good Japanese if he can control the production line.
The old gangsters in Tokyo have found a place for the Holy Light to be useful. When they arrived at HK, they read the news and knew that the new owner had a wide range of businesses and was a 'big company' with all-around skills and the ability to open an airline.
When Watanabe coaxed these old gangsters to come, he didn't dare to say that his group's current main business was making tricycles. The latter felt that when they arrived in Tianyang - although the city was surprisingly bad, the headquarters building was still good.
Let's take a look at the office area in the building. There are hundreds of computers on several floors, which gives people a different feeling. It looks like a modern enterprise.
The senior among the old social workers was also well-informed and asked in a low voice, "Watanabe-san, this group is bigger than we thought."
Watanabe couldn't understand the meaning of these words for a while. When several others looked at the planning map of the 'Holy Light' Industrial Park, the most surprising thing was not how many projects and buildings there were on the plan...
Instead, it is a simple description of Tianyang in a few lines next to the plan.
"Tianyang has a total area of nearly 40,000 square kilometers and a total population of about 7 million. The province where it is located covers an area of nearly 170,000 square kilometers and has a population of nearly 40 million. Tianyang is located in the south, with hundreds of millions of people surrounding it, and the market is huge.
"
Watanabe relayed this passage, and several old social workers were all in a daze.
Japan's total area is less than 400,000 square kilometers, and its current population is only 120 million. Tokyo is considered a densely populated area, with only tens of thousands.
In fact, in terms of population and area, Japan is not only inferior to the United States, but also larger than the old capitalist countries in Europe. This is the fundamental reason why its economic scale has always ranked second or third in the world.
But if you change the target to China, the Japanese will languish. All Japanese manufacturers coming to China will face a question - why is this country so big? There are so many people?
Size, size, size!
You must say this word three times.
When a Japanese engineer develops a new product, the sales target may be one million units, and the market will be saturated. He must rack his brains to earn back the cost and make enough profits on the quantity of one million units.
This is why Japan attaches great importance to overseas markets. Because relying solely on its own domestic market, a large number of companies will go bankrupt.
But it is far more difficult to develop foreign markets than the domestic market - again, it is the early 1990s, and the Americans are desperately trying to add tariffs to Japanese products, and it is not uncommon to smash Japanese cars and Japanese electrical appliances.
Japan's major car companies are having a tough time right now.
In China, sales of one million household products are just the beginning. The billion-level market is larger than Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea combined.
Goods can circulate freely in this market. When goods from Guangdong are purchased thousands of kilometers away in Xinjiang, no one will jump out and ask for tariffs.
This will be a completely different strategy in terms of product design and pricing. For the same product, selling one million and selling ten million are completely different things.
What if it sells for 100 million? That can even affect the industrial structure.
Tianyang, a little-known little place, actually has a population of seven million. Considering that there are hundreds of millions of people in its surrounding area, the few old people in the community were all stunned.
"Watanabe-san, are there any competitors to the products of 'Holy Light'?" asked a senior member of the old community.
Watanabe already understood what his compatriots were lamenting and replied in a low voice: "The 'Holy Light' Group has no competitors. Its only enemy is itself."
The old social workers almost cried when they heard this.
A unified region, unified laws, unified language, unified culture, and unified ethnic groups. Such a good market is simply the holy land that the manufacturing industry dreams of!
The most urgent thing for ‘Holy Light’ right now is to increase production capacity, increase production capacity, increase production capacity..., work hard to increase production capacity!
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