Japan Is Giving Companies Money to Move Out of China

$2.3 billion in 2020

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on Friday unveiled the first group of Japanese companies to subsidize for shifting manufacturing out of China to Southeast Asia or Japan.

Eighty-seven companies or groups will receive a total of 70 billion yen ($653 million) to move production lines, in a bid to reduce Japan’s reliance on its large neighbor and build resilient supply chains.

Thirty of these will shift production to Southeast Asia, including Hoya, which produces hard-drive parts and will move to Vietnam and Laos.

Sumitomo Rubber Industries will make nitrile rubber gloves in Malaysia, while Shin-Etsu Chemical will shift production of rare-earth magnets to Vietnam.

The other 57 projects will head to Japan.

Household goods maker Iris Ohyama currently produces face masks at Chinese plants in the port city of Dalian, Liaoning Province, and Suzhou, west of Shanghai, with nonwoven fabric and other main materials procured from Chinese companies.

With the help of subsidies, the company will begin producing face masks at its Kakuda factory in its home base in Miyagi Prefecture in northern Japan. All material will be prepared locally, independent of overseas suppliers.

Hygiene products maker Saraya, whose offerings include alcohol-based sanitizer, also qualifies for the subsidy.

Eligible companies include producers of aviation parts, auto parts, fertilizer, medicine and paper products, with the roster incorporating such big names as SharpShionogiTerumo and Kaneka.

The government earmarked 220 billion yen in the fiscal 2020 supplementary budget to create a subsidy program to encourage companies to move plants to Japan. Of that amount, 23.5 billion yen was set aside to promote the diversification of production sites from China to Southeast Asia.

Early in the coronavirus outbreak, Japan experienced a severe challenge in sourcing such items as masks, many of which come from China.

Source: Nikkei Asia Review

18 Comments
  1. cechas vodobenikov says

    Japan possesses an admirable culture that has been quite successful for more than 1000 years; this is particularly impressive given that they possess few natural resources—their architecture, literature, design is far superior to that produced in the anglosphere—indeed as Gorer observed amerikans invent nearly nothing (they required Nazi scientists to creat atomic bombs)…it is no accident that amerikans produce nearly nothing—everything found there is produced in Asia and Europe. the Koreans recovered from their economic crisis—Japan will too; USA requires a military dictatorship, police state oligarchy to survive, that is until their empire collapses this decade

    1. joey n says

      indeed as Gorer observed amerikans invent nearly nothing (they required
      Nazi scientists to creat atomic bombs)…it is no accident that amerikans produce nearly nothing—everything found there is produced in Asia and Europe.

      As much as I am tempted to agree on that, I have a few questions I can’t help but ask regarding examples of ‘inventions’ that are often credited to Americans, correctly or otherwise.

      1. The C programming language, for instance, was developed in Bell Labs by Dennis Ritchie. It has since been used for operating systems like Unix, Windows NT, and GNU/Linux. At least one of its forerunners, BCPL, was developed in Britain. Its predecessor ALGOL 60 was developed by computer scientists from the US and some European countries. Would you consider individual programming languages to be ‘inventions’ in their own right?

      2. IBM is often credited for inventing the floppy disk. On the other hand there’s a Japanese inventor Yoshiro Nakamatsu who claims to have invented it beforehand. What’s your opinion?

      3. Texas Instruments is credited for inventing the pocket calculator. Would this be considered a separate ‘invention’ in its own right, or a ‘derivative’ of earlier calculating devices? Same question also applies with Sholes’ typewriter vs. the Hansen Writing Ball (skrivekugle).

  2. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

    This is nothing new. The Japanese have always copied America until they could improve on us.
    They simply are doing to the Chinese what American business did to America.

    1. cechas vodobenikov says

      obvious the reverse is true—u shallow racist

  3. nick1111 says

    Idiots Japs

    1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      Dumber than a box of Japs Americans.

    2. joey n says

      Please explain what you find ‘idiotic’ about this motion. Aside from Japan’s national debt being at least twice its GDP.

  4. john Garcha says

    For what I can see Nikkei Asia Review is a rabidly imperialist pooch, but they shouldn’t forget that they are a very fragile small country without natural resources. After the Wind of change subside they will be a in a very vulnerable situation geographically so far from their Bully Daddy…..

  5. john Garcha says

    Chinese companies will take over the japanese operations in china and keep producing the same stuff -without sharing profits with japan, sounds to me like CHINA WIN-WIN HAHAHA!!!

    1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      The only problem with that is Japan’s record-setting recession that is in its third decade.

  6. john Garcha says

    If japan has for some reason fight China It will be interesting to see how Japanese young men perform in gruesome combat considering that almost one entire generation lives with their parents and has given up to leave their room….. Hilarious…!!!

    1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      You think they’ve given up their traditional kamikaze ideas?

  7. Mark says

    Keep fucking around, Japan – yes, I’m talking to you, country-paying-out-subsidies-when-you-owe-two-hundred-thirty-eight-percent-of-your-GDP. Where did you get the money for that?

    https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/government-debt-to-gdp

    1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      You haven’t heard of the Bank of Japan?

    2. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      MICIMATT is keeping Japan alive so they can host military bases that our soldiers can rape Japanese women on.

  8. plamenpetkov says

    all of Japan’s economy is propped up by the jap gov itself, the Jap central banks buys Jap’s treasury bonds, pure Communism. THe yen is so cheap, it’s literally pennies, whats few more millions added to the dept? Poor japs, all autistic neets, living in tiny boxes, eating cheap noodles to survive and fapping to tentacle pr0n and U-14 “J-idols” little girlz in bathing suits. Poor sad Japan, now all the products will get even more expensive but hey, CHina is the problem.

    1. disqus_3BrONUAJno says

      Then the Fed would have to be communism on steroids.

  9. Mortal says

    That’s pretty good for Japan… if it works. With supply chains so overstreched and dependent upon others nowadays, decoupling is going to be a painful experience. They should have waited to see how London fares first, but time is ticking for them as well.

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