Wow, a whole lot about Japan, and they're getting more and more irrelevant every day.
Other than high end luxury cars, most of the Japanese vehicles sold in the US are made here, many with domestic content rivaling the Big 3 (well, big 2 and Daimler/Chrysler, as Toyota is #3 now)
Take a look at lots of Japanese branded products. You'll notice lots of them are made now in China. The ones that are made in Japan may have sub-assemblies made in China.
High end electronics are still made in Japan, but the commodity business is all moving to China.
China's unsurpassed cost advantages are due to a huge labor pool, increased productivity, and low taxes. Furthermore, the loose banks and looting of former state-owned enterprises has created a pool of "found money," which gets re-cycled back into
additional capacity.
That expanding capacity keeps pricing power low while creating strong competition. The strong competition creates even more
efficiencies as companies strive to maintain profit margins.
It's a cycle that helps explain the export powerhouse that China has become.
As for their currency exchange rate, if they had to write off
all the bad loans the state banks have, they'd probably have
an economic collapse that would make the Asian Crisis look like
a picnic. One could argue the pegged rate takes into account
the horrible state of affairs in the state banking system.
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