"In the process of Japan's economic recovery after the war, Japan's industry was weak from the beginning. Japan's market is much more open than ours, and it is impossible for the capital of developed countries such as the United States to bargain. ”

"But in Japan, it is difficult for companies that do not have Japanese roots to gain a foothold. First of all, the industrial policy is tightly protected by Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. ”

Before Hu Wenhai was reborn, he didn't really do much research on economics – he was an engineer by profession, not a policymaker who needed to study or make policies. But as the so-called is seeking his own government in his position, his current remarks are instead the thinking conclusions reached after reading some books in the past few years, combined with the historical trend of the past history and the future.

As for whether it is correct or not, in fact, he himself is not completely sure. And whether the so-called correct economic laws can still work in this time and space – just look at how much hair is left on the heads of the business school professors who study Hu Wenhai's business case.

"Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry has great power, and many of Japan's prime ministers after the war have come from the ministry. At the heart of MITI's power is its power to formulate Japan's industrial policy. Taking Japan's most developed electronics industry as an example, Japan's electronic products are basically monopolized by domestic enterprises, so is Intel, IBM, and other multinational electronics companies not competitive?"

The three people sitting here today are all people who have been able to go abroad many times, and if you think about it, it is true that there are very few foreign brands of Japanese electronic products. Toshiba, Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Hitachi, NEC, ...... These companies, which are well-known in the world, have eaten up almost the vast majority of the Japanese electronics market.

However, it is difficult to conclude that Japanese products are more competitive, and that the Japanese electronics industry has been in decline since the 90s. In the 80s, Japanese memory did sweep the United States, but now the memory market is back in the hands of Americans.

Since 1990, the total decline of Japan's electronics industry has caused the Ministry of International Trade and Industry to be blamed for the nanny of Japanese industry.

Of course, the reasons for this are very, very complex. Is the policy and standard barriers erected by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry a kind of protection or a kind of self-imprisoning? is the blame for the failure of the state-directed industrial model, or the fact that the growing consortium has begun to be dissatisfied with the MITI's fingers, or is it Japan's innate political weakness to the United States, or is it the massive political resources of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry that have been attacked......

Thousands of research works can be written in any one aspect of argument – thousands are not imaginary numbers, but conservative numbers.

"Japan's electronics industry is the best example to study the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. In the face of the first-mover advantage and technological superiority of the United States in the electronics industry, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry adopted a strategy of casting standard barriers in order to protect its own industry from being stifled. ”

"If you know anything about Japanese electronics, you can see that Japanese electronics often use some different interfaces, formats, and even technical systems than European and American electronic products. ”

It's a pity that due to time reasons, Hu Wenhai can't come up with the most powerful case. In this regard, the Japanese mobile network is the most reflective of the Japanese way of thinking. In the 2G era, the world is faced with two choices, either the G** standard or the CDMA standard, and there is always a choice between the two.

In order to protect the domestic market, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) took the lead in establishing a third set of standards that were inferior to the other two sets of standards - PDC communication standards, and it is conceivable that only Japan in the world has adopted this standard.

However, it is precisely because of this that the domestic mobile communications market is almost divided between Japanese companies, and foreign companies cannot enter at all. Even in the 3G and 4G era, there are still very few foreign companies that can survive in the Japanese market. Because Japanese mobile phones are one machine and one number, mobile phones can only be purchased from operators, and it is not an open market at all.

However, from another point of view, the Japanese mobile phone companies under the protection of this policy have indeed been prominent for a while. But then for a variety of reasons, it died in the market competition, even if there are Japanese operators who pull the shelf, they can only allow Apple, Samsung and Huawei to enter the domestic market.

Looking at it this way, this kind of industrial policy barrier of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry has a somewhat somewhat sluggish feeling of success and failure.

"We need a Chinese Ministry of International Trade and Industry, but we must understand that the purpose of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry is to enable us to go out and not lie down and make money in the domestic market, which is the most valuable lesson learned from Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry. ”

When Hu Wenhai said this, Lin Xia of the Economic and Trade Office couldn't help frowning and asked cautiously.

"I probably understand what Mr. Hu meant, for example, if we want to open the market for agricultural products, we can sign generously when negotiating, and then formulate a soybean market standard in China, and then write it in with the advantages of our domestic soybean varieties, resulting in American soybeans not meeting China's soybean standards, so it's useless to sign?"

Lin Xia moved her lips, but she still couldn't hold back, and asked rhetorically: "Americans are ** lawyers, but they are not stupid either, and it is too ugly to eat if they really do this." If we can formulate targeted policies at home, can't the United States? Everyone erects standard barriers, and the Americans have a higher level of technology, so we must be the ones who are unlucky, right?"

"That's not your understanding. ”

Hu Wenhai saw the distrust in Lin Xia's eyes, and obviously was able to propose a plan like a standard barrier, which in her eyes was a disguised means for capitalists to use government relations to monopolize the domestic market.

"When I proposed the standard barrier proposal, I learned the lessons of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. First of all, there is a prerequisite, the purpose of formulating standards must not be to make domestic industries make money comfortably in the country, but must be based on the premise of 'going out'. ”

"What is going out? I have an immature case, which of you knows about China's rare earth resources?"

Hu Wenhai looked at both sides, Xu Haiping raised his hand and said unhurriedly: "I have some understanding, the export of rare earth resources is China's major foreign exchange earner, last year's output was 24,000 tons, and the export volume was 20,000 tons, accounting for about 40% of the international market trade." ”

Hu Wenhai nodded, and said with a straight face: "Very good, I also have a few data here that I can take out." ”

"The main sources of rare earths in China are in Baotou and Sichuan, and some minerals are also developed in Jiangxi and some southern provinces. After tasting the delicious taste of rare earth exports, Baotou has planned to expand its production capacity by another 20,000 tons by 1994 this year. Mianning, Sichuan Province also plans to invest 30,000 tons of rare earth projects, and projects in other provinces together will provide 20,000 tons of production capacity in the next two years. ”

"The main direction of China's rare earth resources export is Japan and France, that is to say, by 1995 at the latest, China's rare earth production capacity will increase by 70,000 tons, nearly three times more than the current supply. According to the simple market principle, what will happen to the increase in supply? Pessimistic estimates show that the price of rare earth resources will decline catastrophically in three years. ”

"On the other hand, because of our backward technology for developing rare earths, indiscriminate mining, indiscriminate construction, and indiscriminate refining are very common. One tonne of rare earths is refined using ten tonnes of water, and it can cause irreversible damage to local ecosystems, and it takes at least three to five times as much money to control these pollution as rare earth exports. Exporting rare earths may seem profitable, but in reality we are doing a loss-making business. ”

"At this time, there must be a Chinese Ministry of International Trade and Industry to stand up and formulate industrial policies and standards. What is the policy? The policy of restricting the export of rare earth resources as primary raw materials encourages enterprises to develop rare earth industrial products, develop downstream of the industry, and export industrial products with higher added value as much as possible. In addition, it is necessary to formulate standards for the development of rare earth resources, kick out small enterprises and small capital that are indiscriminately mined and built, and form a large-scale rare earth resources group to develop rare earth resources in an orderly manner with high technical standards and high environmental protection standards. ”

Hu Wenhai glanced at Lin Xia when he said this, shook his head and said: "Even if we take soybeans as an example, we are not formulating standards specifically to import American agricultural products, but to allow our soybean industry to go out." Even if we want to import, we have to import high-quality soybeans grown abroad by our Chinese companies. Let the edible oil enterprises and feed enterprises grow, and then go to the great plains of Ukraine and go to the big estates in South America to plant our soybeans, so that we can hold food security in our own hands. ”

Yes, the opening of agricultural markets is an obstacle that is difficult to bypass in the creation negotiations.

The United States' agriculture is very developed, while China's food security is regarded as the bottom line of the national strategy, and only by looking at the implementation of the red line of 1.8 billion mu can be seen that this is not a simple market behavior. However, in the original historical WTO accession talks, grain imports were not kept in the end, but the negotiation team still did its best to protect key industries such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

This is Hu Wenhai's unscientific.

The original historical development commission is actually China's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, or strengthened the model. However, both China's Ministry of International Trade and Industry and Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry have a similar problem, that is, they may not be able to grasp the pulse of history. Once there is a problem in the economic situation, the photovoltaic industry after 2008 is the best example, I don't know how many people have been brought into the pit.

But as long as we are optimistic about the industry, the professor of the Wharton School swears with the hair on his head - as long as mortals have no brains, don't think too much.

For example, the soybean problem, the construction of the southern railway of Kazakhstan twenty years ahead of schedule, the hardcore allies of the *** family, the great plains of Ukraine plus the racial talent of the Chinese, it is really unreasonable to do American agriculture.

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