JAPANESE COMPETITION

Grey River Argus, 5 September 1934, Page 7

JAPANESE COMPETITION

SOME EXPLANATIONS. What is the explanation of the remarkable advance of Japan’s export trade and the formidable competition which she is now offering to other industrial countries? Interesting statements on the above question were made al the Session of the International Labour Conference held at Geneva in June last. Composed as it is of representatives of Governments, employers and workers, the Conference is in a sense the world’s Industrial parliament, and it. was natural that the representatives of Japan should take the opportunity of setting forth their view of the problem of Japanese industrialisation and its possible effects on industrial and social standards in other countries as well as in their own.

In his report to the Conference, the Director of the International Labour Office had pointed out that from 1931 to 1933 the value of Japanese exports had risen from 1,179 to 1,932 million yen and the value of imports from 1,319 to 2,017 million yen. Commenting on this statement, the spokesman of the Japanese Government said that to take the figures for 1931 as the basis of comparison gave an erroneous impression ,because 1931 had been an abnormal year. As compared with 1929, Japanese exports in 1933 showed a decrease of 14 per cent, in value, and as compared with 1925 a decrease of 26 per cent. The foreign trade of Japan in 1933 represented only 3.09 per cent, of world trade. The increase in the total trade of Japan between 1929 and 1933 did not amount to more than 0.23 per cent., and the increase in export trade amounted only to 0.29 per cent. A large number of countries, notably France, Great Britain and Belgium had increased their trade to a much greater extent. By her foreign trade, Japan was contributing to the industrial recovery of the countries with which she was trading. With her scanty natural resources she was obliged to buy abroad most of her raw materials—3B per cent, of the iron, 40 per cent, of the wheat, and 100 per cent, of the cotton and wool which she required. Should Japanese exports be suddenly checked and her imports correspondingly decrease, the people who would suffer most directly would be the manufacturers of the industrial nations of the West and the producers of raw materials the world over.

The representative of the Japanese employers assured the Conference that his people, were in earnest in their desire to collaborate with other nations in readjusting commercial relations, so that the peoples of the entire world might enjoy the benefits of industrial civilisation. If the populations of the relatively undeveloped areas were enabled to pursue their occupations in peace their earning power would be multiplied and they would offer potential markets of unlimited capacity. The Japanese workers’ delegate appealed to the Government and the employers of his own country to agree to the ratification of certain International Labour treaties in order to prove the justice of their claim that Japanese trade progress in recent years was due to increased efficiency and technical progress rather than to the exploitation of wage-earners. The spokesman of the workers’ group at the Conference, Mr. Jouhaux (France), while admitting that the less iindustrialised peoples must be free to develop, urged that the resulting international competition must not be allowed to lead to a lowering of the standard of living in the more advanced countries, but that the process of adjustment should occur through “levelling up instead" of down”, —by the abandonment of the lower stand aids.