COMMON MARKET

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28802, 24 January 1959, Page 13

COMMON MARKET

“Japan Worried About Effects”

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON. January 23. A message tn “The Times" today drew attention to Japan’s “concern" at the possible effects of the six-nation European Common Market and claimed that she was especially worried about her exports to South-East Asia. “The Japanese economy is vulnerable to any changes in the climate of international trade,” the newspaper’s Tokyo correspondent said. “The long-term effects of the common market may be beneficial, if their outcome is freer trade. Japan, however, in her thirst for new markets, and in her anxiety not to loose her hold on those she has. lives from hand to mouth. "The greatest concern is felt about competition between Japan and the Common Market in third countries. “If the integration of the economies of the ‘six’ proceeds according to plan. Western Europe will have over Japan the advantage of a unified, highly skilled, and industrialised workshop of some 165 million people. “In this workshop production has been rationalisted, and obsolete and uncompetitive concerns —with which Japan herself is weighed down—have been eliminated. “She is particularly worried about her exports to South-East Asia and Asian countries, which account tor forty per cent, of her total trade," the correspondent said.