Japan, July 1995. Tokyo.

When Lin Qi returned to Japan, I felt that compared with a few years ago, Tokyo was still prosperous, but people's mood and temperament have changed dramatically.

A few years ago, Japan's economy was in full swing, and even ordinary low-level Japanese people had all kinds of unrealistic dreams. Now, as Japan's economy recedes from the myth of high growth, and gradually turns from the engine of global economic growth to a burden that drags down global economic growth, ordinary Japanese people have a sense of inferiority and frustration in their expressions.

With the collapse of Japan's economic bubble, Japan has looked calm in recent years.

But in fact, real estate, finance, retail, manufacturing, electronics and other enterprises are constantly deleveraging and de-bubbles. On the surface, some companies have maintained even modest earnings growth, but many more have gradually become zombie companies with the recession of the Japanese economy.

As a result, the 29-year Great Depression brought great harm to the United States and the world, and even triggered World War II. This kind of lesson makes any modern country, when it realizes that its domestic economy is in difficulty, its first reaction is to ease monetary policy and cut taxes, and the government directly intervenes to help enterprises in difficulty stabilize employment.

Therefore, in Japan in the 90s, there were no landslides and tsunamis, but the consequences of the economic recession were slowly resolved in a few decades.

Of course, it was the Japanese government that paid the price, and the Japanese government increased its deficit and borrowed money to save the banks. Banks, on the other hand, are constantly helping enterprises.

In the short term, with the help of the government, Japanese banks and companies will be able to barely maintain, and even have the confidence to gradually improve their operations and get out of the predicament by working hard. But this dream of relying on hope and hard work to gradually change the decline was also shattered later, and the reason for the shattering was the Asian financial crisis in 98. After 98 years, the Asian financial crisis caused the Japanese government to lose its vitality and had to reduce its help to enterprises and banks. Therefore, after 98 years, the scale of bank bankruptcies and corporate bankruptcies in Japan has once again entered a climax.

In Japan in the mid-90s, many people felt that it was only a temporary economic struggle, and that it might rebound after bottoming out. However, it was not until after 98 that many people began to wake up to the fact that this was clearly an economic defeat and a loss of ten years.

Ten years later, some people began to reflect that the Japanese economy seemed to have lost two decades. After losing 20 years, it has not really stabilized, because ...... Although Japan has digested a lot of bubbles, it ...... The Japanese who have been decadent for more than 20 years have lost the spirit of going in, and do not believe that hard work will be rewarded, but will think that hard work will lose more.

Of course, in the mid-90s, the Japanese business community had a deeper understanding of the current economic situation in Japan than the people.

"Lin Sang, long time no see!" Kentaro Ichimura, president of Ricoh Co., Ltd., shook hands with Lin Qi, whose hair had turned gray, "More than ten years ago, I would never have thought that the humble electronic toy manufacturer would have grown to such a point now! If I could continue to cooperate with your company, Ricoh might have broken through the bottleneck and become a top chaebol!"

Lin Qi nodded and said, "I still need to thank Ricoh for supplying chips cheaply back then!"

At the beginning, Lin Qi didn't calculate that he could create a technology giant like the New Entrepreneurship Department, and his initial goal was even just to make a company like Nintendo.

The reason why Ricoh foundry chips were selected in advance is also because Ricoh's chips are cheaper than those of MOS Technology in the United States. Only cheap chips can develop cheap explosive products.

The initial pattern of the new venture electronics group is not high, but it is by relying on the early handhelds, arcades and other businesses that do not have much technical content to accumulate huge profits, so that Lin Qi further seized the historic opportunity, before the simplified instruction set chip was not accepted by the market, invested heavily in the research and development of XRM architecture CPU, relying on the late-mover advantage, so that the XRM instruction set chip is better than X86 such a complex instruction set chip in architecture.

Even, the initial foundry of XRM chips is still responsible for Ricoh. It was not until the establishment of the new venture electronics group and its own wafer factory that it gradually parted ways with Ricoh. After that, Xinchuang Electronics Group relied on its own mastery of core technology, established Pangu computer industry chain and software and hardware ecology little by little, and became a technology giant larger than IBM step by step!

Of course, the reason why IBM is not as mixed as Xinchuang Electronics is more because of the early stage of the PC industry layout, and it did not have a correct mentality, just watching Apple make money, and also wanted to make a profit. Moreover, because IBM was afraid of the anti-monopoly law, it did not choose to independently develop chips and operating systems at the beginning, but chose to outsource these core technologies. In the end, IBM built the PC industry chain, but it was Intel, Microsoft and other companies that benefited the most. If IBM had invested more resources at the beginning, then the pattern would have been much bigger than it is now.

In the early days of the new entrepreneurship department, it was almost similar to Apple's strategy, but the master was prescient and did not make Apple's mistakes. Core technologies such as CPUs and operating systems are independently developed, so the initiative to upgrade core technologies has always been in their own hands. Unlike Apple Computer, at the end of the 70s, it was almost an absolute monopolist in the market, but it was because the most critical CPU manufacturers dragged their feet, which caused Apple Computer to get up early in the morning and catch up with a late market, and the market share of personal computers was taken away by later PCs and Pangu computers.

A tech giant like the New Venture Electronics Group, which has been growing, is rare in the world. Even for giants like IBM, the scale has been shrinking over the years, reducing staff to increase efficiency, beautifying financial statements, and in fact, the ability to innovate has been weakening.

And the new venture group group, even if it is such a block now, it is not very difficult to maintain a growth rate of 20%~20% per year. Because, the new entrepreneurship department has seized too many outlets, and there are too many growth points in the current layout of the industry.

For many years, Ricoh's size remained at $3 billion, and after deducting the appreciation of the yen, it basically did not grow, and even became smaller than it was at the beginning.

The annual revenue of the new entrepreneurship department can exceed 300 billion US dollars, and it is also a well-deserved top chaebol in the world. At the beginning, in the eyes of Ricoh, the new venture electronics group wanted financial resources but no financial resources, and no technology, which was just a shit luck and made a fortune nouveau riche by relying on popular products.

However, the current Ricoh Group can only look up to the new venture electronics group.

Not to mention the whole of the new venture electronics group, it is Japan's new venture co., LTD., which is a giant with assets of more than 30 billion US dollars. During the Japanese economic recession, the new business department repeatedly made additional investments. Even many large Japanese companies that were resistant to outsiders in the new startup department in the past are now forced by the situation to hug the thighs of the new startup index company.

You must know that the woman Uejima has money, and out of more than $30 billion in assets, more than $10 billion in cash can be used for investment, and she can earn more than $2 billion in profits in Japan every year.

Relying on a lot of money in his hands, Ueshima Akiko's influence in Japan's Sankei field is getting higher and higher, and even Japan's high-level officials are constantly asking Ueshima Akira for advice and consulting on prescriptions to change Japan's economic predicament.

In this regard, Ueshima also suggested, for example, to invest in the technology industry at any cost and seize the opportunities of the Internet economy. But...... The traditional Japanese bureaucracy did not take this seriously, but felt that Ueshima was making a bad idea to sell her loss-making Internet business.

You must know that the largest investment in the Internet field in Japan is the new start-up Co., Ltd., Yahoo Japan, Tesco Japanese, Qiqi Japanese, TT Communication Japan...... It can be said that 90% of Japan's Internet traffic is about to be monopolized by new start-up websites. However, these industries incur losses of $800 million a year. Without these losses, the return on equity of Nippon Shin Startup would have been even more beautiful.

Therefore, officials and entrepreneurs of the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry are skeptical of this. This is because many companies in Japan's economic problems do not make profits, and the principal and interest lent by banks to enterprises will not be returned, and Japan's banking industry is generally in difficulty and needs the government's help. The government is also in difficulty, and the money lent to the banks is not only not returned, but also needs to be given more to help the banks resolve the bad debt crisis. If the bank wants to really get out of the predicament, it must change the economic environment and make a profit before the money can be returned to the bank......

In short, now that the Japanese government is afraid of losing money, it wants to see not the doctrine of burning money, but the business that can generate profits.