American Strategic Deception Bureau

　Japanese companies were transformed into welfare institutions by Americans, and Japanese rural areas were forcibly degenerated into a small-scale peasant economy.

　——According to American economists, most of Japan's heavy industries have been dismantled, and what remains is only enough for its own use.

　The rest of the Japanese companies were also cut off from their source of cheap labor, had their wages raised, and were forced to adopt a lifetime employment system that prohibited the dismissal of employees. At the same time, most of them no longer had bosses, and shareholders had no way to effectively supervise employees' work. Operations relied entirely on the self-consciousness of the company's management... Hasn't this become a welfare home?

　The Japanese run welfare homes and compete with entrepreneurs from all over the world in the international market. What other options do they have besides bankruptcy?

　Next, after the land reform, Japan's rural areas changed from large farms (Americans thought that Japanese landlords were equivalent to American large farmers) to small plots of farmland managed by families. Food production must have plummeted, and at most it was only enough for farmers to be self-sufficient, with no surplus food to supply cities.

　From then on, Japan's industrial and agricultural competitiveness was reduced to zero. It could only drag the burden of high welfare and become a dumping market for the United States forever!

　Just like that, with the end of economic and social reforms, a group of American experts who only talked about theory on paper left Japan with a satisfied smirk.

　As a result, just over a decade later, Japan, which had risen from the ruins, slapped them hard in the face with its dazzling economic miracle!

　Less than two decades after the end of World War II, Japan hosted the Olympics, built the Tokyo Tower, and launched the world's first high-speed railway, the Tokaido Shinkansen. Tokyo, once burned to the ground by the LeMay inferno, was once again transformed into a bustling metropolis of skyscrapers.

　By 1968, Japan had surpassed established European capitalist powers like Britain, France, Germany, and Italy to become the world's second-largest economy, surpassing only the United States in economic power. Its output of electrical appliances and chemical fibers was world-leading, a fact that astonished everyone.

　Even though they bear the original sin of being a defeated country, Japanese companies are still beating European and American companies in the international market, forcing them to retreat step by step and cry for help.

　Moreover, compared with the United States, Japan has better public security and a smaller gap between the rich and the poor. It is known as the "100 million middle class" of the entire middle class.

　!

　Why did this happen? Why did the economic reform strategy that American experts, with malicious intent, "tailored" for Japan during the occupation period, not only not lead to chaos, poverty, and decline, but instead facilitated Japan's miraculous rise and achieved such dazzling results?

　First, the US occupation forces initially dismantled many machines from Japanese factories and gave them to neighboring Asian countries as war reparations, seemingly dealing a blow to Japan's heavy industry. However, as a "poor imperialist" nation, Japan's industry before World War II was already known for its age and backwardness. Many of Japan's machine tools were cheaply purchased secondhand from Europe and the United States, patched up and used until they were already outdated and obsolete.

　The occupying forces dismantled these machines from Japan and gave them to neighboring countries as war reparations, but it also helped Japan clear out its old assets, allowing companies to move forward with lighter loads, keep up with the times, and directly purchase and use the latest machinery and equipment—if the old goes, the new will come!

　Now, the old machines were either destroyed in the war or dismantled and compensated to other countries. Japanese companies have no choice but to update their technology.

　Furthermore, given the size of Japan's economy at the time and its precarious position as a defeated nation, it was impossible to continue pursuing a full industrial chain development path. After the US slashed some of its industrial sectors, Japanese companies had a lighter load and could focus on developing profitable industries first.

　Secondly, due to limited knowledge and a lack of understanding of Japan's national conditions, the experts advising the occupation forces failed to notice that their forced implementation of the dismantling of the zaibatsu, land reform, wage increases, and lifetime employment system in Japan seemed to have destroyed the core competitiveness of the Japanese economy and dismantled the key nodes of its operation. However, they actually achieved an unprecedented miracle in Japan: fairness!

　You must know that before the defeat, the society of the old Japanese Empire was not only strictly hierarchical, but also had a very large rentier class - in the countryside, they were landlords who collected rent, and in the city, they were shareholders who relied on dividends from shares. The common characteristic of them was that they got something for nothing.

　These vampires and parasites don't have to do anything every day, they can just lie down and collect money, thus controlling most of Japan's wealth.

　What's worse is that compared with these pampered parasites, those who work hard to earn money look like fools.

　However, with the brutal reforms forcibly launched by the US occupation forces, the entire rentier class in Japanese society was wiped out in an instant - the nobles were all demoted to commoners, the zaibatsu were deprived of their shares, the landlords had their farmland confiscated, and even the emperor's property was taken away by General MacArthur...

　In short, the vast majority of upper-class Japanese people can no longer sit back and collect money. If they want to maintain a wealthy life, they have to earn money on their own.

　Without these exploiting classes riding on the heads of the people, and without a huge army to support, the burden on the Japanese people was naturally greatly reduced.

　Later, although the United States dismantled the Japanese zaibatsu and distributed farmland to individual households, they underestimated the ability of ordinary Japanese people to work together. Within a few years, agricultural cooperatives were established in rural Japan to coordinate technological innovation and modernization in agricultural production.

　The divided Japanese companies did not continue to fight alone, but quickly reconnected to form loosely cooperative corporate groups.

　Although these Japanese companies have dispersed ownership and no major shareholder to oversee the company's profitability, relying entirely on management's willingness to operate, they also implement a lifetime employment system. Even if performance is poor, layoffs are not permitted. As long as the company survives bankruptcy, employees must be supported for life and receive pensions.

　At first glance, it seems like a heavy burden.

　But the problem is that after such reforms, Japanese employees are expected to dedicate their entire lives to their companies, and Japanese companies are expected to support their employees for life. Shareholders have little say in how companies are run, leaving everything to the management team, who have been promoted from ordinary employees, to manage themselves...

　Didn’t Japanese companies become collective enterprises after the war?

　Look, apart from the fact that there is no planned economic committee above it, what is the difference between this and the Soviet state-owned enterprises?

　After this happened, the actual owners of Japanese companies have become employees, not shareholders!

　Even those bosses who survived said that employees were more important than shareholders. Because shareholders could withdraw their investment at any time, employees were the backbone of the company!

　Now, for employees of Japanese companies, "the company is my home" has really become!

　Because post-war Japanese companies all have a lifetime employment system, the fate of employees is highly tied to the company. When employees are young, they work overtime and work hard for the company. Then, when employees get old, the company must be grateful and provide them with retirement care. They must never kick employees out and output them to society.

　At the same time, employees under the lifetime employment system basically will not change jobs, so the company's employee training is also lifelong. They can spare no expense and spend eight, ten, or even twenty or thirty years training employees to learn skills, so that their craftsmanship can be constantly improved. Relying on the "people-oriented" principle, the company can stand out in international competition.

　Some large Japanese companies, in particular, take care of their employees' housing, medical care, children's education, and even their spouses' social circles. As long as employees are willing to work hard, the company will take care of all other life troubles. As long as the company survives, employees will be taken care of from birth to death.

　On the contrary, if the business goes bankrupt, the rest of the employees’ lives will be ruined.

　The relationship between employees and companies has truly become one of shared life and death. Even senior executives are no exception, and no one can easily change jobs.

　Therefore, Japanese companies

　The goal is no longer short-term profit, but long-term survival!

　Not making money and not being able to distribute dividends to shareholders is a small matter. The real disaster is when the company goes bankrupt and everyone is left on the streets without a pension!

　In addition, unlike the inefficient state-owned enterprises in the late Soviet Union, Japanese companies rarely experience collective work stoppages under the lifetime employment system.

　Because, unlike the iron rice bowl of Soviet state-owned enterprises, Japanese companies will really go bankrupt if they are not managed well!

　What's even worse is that all Japanese companies offer lifetime employment and only hire new employees. Even low-level employees find it difficult to change jobs and start over.

　Therefore, during the golden age of the Japanese economy, if a company found itself on the verge of collapse, no one, from the president to the salesperson, would lie low and make sarcastic remarks. Instead, everyone would desperately exert 200% of their subjective initiative to save the company at all costs.

　As we all know, “When people are united, they can move mountains.”

　The hearts of the people in those successful Japanese companies after the war were united to such an extent, so what difficulties could not be overcome?

　On the other hand, if the company pays low salaries and lays off employees at every turn, then the management of the company will be solely the boss's responsibility. Not only will the employees only find ways to slack off, but even the managers will just do their job day by day and look for another job when the situation gets bad. Who will live and die with the company?

　To sum up, in the three or four decades after the war, the employees of Japanese companies were not the listless "corporate slaves" of the future, but vigorous "corporate warriors" who truly regarded the company as their home, worked hard for the company, voluntarily worked overtime until they died of overwork, and had a strong sense of collectivism.

　One has the mentality of a master, and the other has the mentality of a worker. The difference in their subjective initiative is as great as the world.

　Even better, because Japanese companies are not accountable to shareholders and only fear bankruptcy, they can afford to focus on market share rather than short-term profits. In contrast, American companies, in order to produce impressive financial reports for shareholders, must prioritize short-term profits, which puts them at a significant disadvantage in the competition.

　Of course, as a side effect of the lifetime employment system, every Japanese company always has some people who are incompetent or can no longer work, so they choose to lie down and are called the window tribe - they stand aside when encountering any problems, sit by the window every day to watch the scenery, and receive their basic salary on time every month.

　But this is also a necessary price: if you want your employees to regard themselves as the owners of the company, you have to treat them as owners.

　Moreover, for a company, it is always cheaper to support a few idle people than to support a large number of shareholders who do nothing!

　——In order to prevent operations from being interfered with by ignorant major shareholders, post-war Japanese companies further engaged in cross-holdings, making equity more dispersed, further reducing shareholders' say in the company, and allowing management to ignore shareholders' dividend demands and decide on business strategies on their own.

　Compared with American companies that place too much emphasis on short-term profits and have to produce beautiful financial reports every year, Japanese companies like this obviously have more advantages in long-term operations.

　In this way, the malicious reforms that American experts originally intended to undermine the competitiveness of Japanese companies actually created Japan's post-war economic miracle.

　It even allowed Japanese companies to sweep the European and American markets, leading people to mistakenly believe that the 21st century would be the "Japanese Century"!

　In short, Marshal MacArthur had a bad heart, and the Americans who carried out his orders were even more vicious and full of malice towards Japan.

　But due to their lack of knowledge and the fact that Japan's national conditions were too outrageous, they ended up turning a negative into a positive, and miraculously improved Japan's economy!

　-

　However, Japan's post-war economic recovery, which was based on the lifetime employment system, also determined its ceiling height from the very beginning.

　Japan's "corporate warriors" may appear to be highly cohesive, but in reality, they operate in a catch-up system, lacking the ability to innovate independently. When Japanese companies still lag behind their Western counterparts in technology and other areas, their own innovative capabilities are practically irrelevant. This is because, during this catching-up process, Western companies ahead of them consistently provide clear guidance on the correct strategic direction. All Japan's "corporate warriors" need to do is desperately catch up, learn, digest, and absorb knowledge, making at most minor adjustments and modifications to adapt it to Japanese conditions.

　Therefore, when Japan rose from the ruins of the post-war era, as long as the corporate warriors were united, they would surely be able to "work hard and achieve miracles."

　This is essentially no different from the "Red Miracle" of the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, when it rapidly achieved industrialization through three five-year plans.

　——They all have similar lifetime employment and seniority-based systems, and both solve the problem of team cohesion, thereby achieving rapid catch-up.

　On this basis, the concepts of "craftsmanship" and continuous improvement are all about focusing on doing something well, rather than thinking about what to do.

　Because there are already pioneers who tell you what you should do - your task is just to get things done, not to ask why.

　However, when Japanese companies finally reach the forefront of their global peers and must find their own strategic direction in this chaos, they will fall into confusion and bewilderment. They have long been accustomed to following the footsteps of Europe and the United States. When they take the lead, they are unable to take the first step.

　When Japan reached a stage where it was no longer possible to "free ride" and independent invention and innovation were needed, the lifetime employment system and seniority system of Japanese companies slid from a positive role to a negative role, because it was essentially a closed system.

　The system has severely restricted the imagination and creativity of employees.

　If there are people to learn from and emulate, then it doesn't matter, just follow suit. But if there aren't any... then we're at a loss.

　More importantly, apart from making money and becoming rich and powerful, Japan has no real direction of its own.

　——As a de facto semi-colony of the United States, it is difficult for Japan to come up with independent national policy concepts and it can only follow the baton of the United States.

　After reunification, Germany was able to leverage the EU's shell to envision and implement the dream of a "United States of Europe." While the results were disappointing, it at least motivated the entire European Union to strive for it for decades. Japan, however, cannot even dream of this kind.

　Although Japan proposed a "flying geese formation" during its economic heyday in the 1980s, claiming to be the leader of all Asian countries, the problem is that as long as the United States objects, Japan's grand blueprint will immediately collapse, leaving no room for resistance.

　Just like when the United States arbitrarily ordered Japan to dismantle its once world-leading semiconductor industry and transfer its most advanced chip supply chain to South Korea, Japan could only obey the order and dismantle its own strengths, behaving nothing like a great power, but more like a castrated eunuch.

　If the government above does not have a national policy that it can stick to, then the companies below will naturally not be able to see the direction of progress and will gradually become short-sighted.

　Therefore, starting from the 1980s, some short-sighted Japanese companies began to stand still. Like many American companies, they advocated financial reports above all else, only seeking good short-term returns. They stopped spending money on research and development, and instead invested the funds in stocks, real estate, and futures, just to make quick money.

　So much so that at the end of the 20th century, many Japanese researchers, despite being looked at as if they were idiots by Chinese stowaways, resolutely jumped ship to then-relatively backward China: Japan had stopped spending money on R&D in these fields, and the United States had long since deindustrialized. If they didn't want to waste their days sitting in an office reading newspapers, wasting their life's knowledge, they had no choice but to come to China to start over.

　Obviously, the more ambitious the intellectuals are, the less they want to achieve anything in their lives, and would rather try a different track.

　Other equally short-sighted Japanese companies have become masters of accounting, obsessed with maximizing profits and only wanting to get something for free without paying the bills.

　For example, Japan once vigorously promoted hydrogen-powered vehicles, claiming to have developed 20,000 patents, and seemed to be leading a new era of clean energy.

　But in fact, Japan's patents on hydrogen energy are all concentrated in the application aspect, while it has done almost nothing in the crucial hydrogen production, storage and transportation industry chain. It is simply waiting for scientists from other countries to overcome technical difficulties, and then Japan uses them for free by relying on application patents.

　It's like Japan is setting up a toll booth in the hydrogen vehicle sector, waiting for other countries to build roads, and then charging them.

　Or it is equivalent to the fact that the great inventor Edison simply applied for a patent for the light bulb, and then did nothing, waiting for some fool to use tens of thousands of materials to test the filament for him, and finally kicked the real inventor away and took all the benefits by relying on the patent.

　The problem is that there are still many smart people in this world. Scientists from China and the United States saw Japan's greedy attitude of "building toll booths before building roads", so they naturally chose to take a detour to seek benefits and avoid harm, and turned to developing lithium batteries, leaving Japan's advocacy of hydrogen energy vehicles in vain.

　——Is there anyone willing to burn himself to make Japan fatter?

　The hydrogen car example isn't an isolated case; there are many others. Generally speaking, in the post-Cold War era, Japan has been overly calculating and overly clever, consistently hitting the wrong technology tree. This isn't necessarily a flaw in Japanese vision, but rather a shortsighted Japanese tendency to be too lazy to plant trees. They simply want to stake out their territory, waiting for others to plant trees for them for free: how can such a pie-in-the-sky opportunity ever happen so often?

　Therefore, Japan reached its historical peak in the 1980s, and could only stagnate and decline after that.

　Everything Japan had gained under the protection of the United States after the war will be lost one by one under the heavy pressure of the United States.

　This is Japan's destiny that has long been determined.

　——Faced with the American bald eagle, China may be able to say "no", but Japan really cannot say "no"...

　Therefore, regarding Dr. Kissinger's concerns after seeing Japan's economic boom, Firi felt that he was completely worrying too much.

　What are you afraid of? There are American soldiers watching over here in Yokosuka!

　From the very beginning, Japan's post-war economic recovery was restricted by a ceiling and could not escape the control of the United States.

　No matter how optimistically and confidently the increasingly affluent Japanese may claim, "Japan's technology is number one in the world," "Japan's economic output is catching up to that of the United States," or "From New York to London, the Japanese have bought up the world; the European and American century is coming to an end,"...

　But they can't change a cruel fact: Japan is actually a semi-colony occupied by the United States!

　As long as the shackles of the colonial power are not broken, it will be impossible for a semi-colony to develop into a major political power.

　At the very least, a Japan controlled by US troops cannot become a leader in Asia.

　Therefore, postwar Japan is like a fat pig kept in a pigsty. No matter how fat it gets, there is no need to worry about it turning over and hitting its owner. As long as you concentrate on thinking about how to cook it,

　The recipe is ready... If you want to make soup, make soup, if you want to grill, grill...

　After experiencing a rapid rise, the Japanese economy will inevitably fall back to its historical bottom.

　The business philosophies that were once considered the secret weapon for Japan's economic rise will also be discarded by future entrepreneurs.

　Of course, even if the US set a ceiling, compared to those countries that couldn't even reach it, Japan's ability to develop to the limit allowed by the US and become the world's second largest economy for forty years is already a huge success...

　After all, is there any country in this world that is perfect and everlasting?

　Chapter 172: Tokyo is hot tonight

　If we say that during the Anglo-Japanese Alliance era, Britain trained Japan to be a vicious dog that would bite people, then the United States was training Japan to be a meat dog.

　Of course, even if it is a meat dog, it is not an easy task for anyone to grow so fat and strong in Japan.

　Those incompetent lackey countries don’t know how to fatten themselves up even if they want to become a fat meat dog!

　Japan wasn't the only country to receive significant US support after World War II. However, few countries have achieved the same level of development as Japan. Even South Korea, which later achieved the "Han River Miracle," still lagged far behind Japan in many respects.

　As for other American running dogs, some of them were even fed desperately by the American boss, and even after stuffing their mouths full of dog food, they still starved themselves to death!

　Well, we are not talking about Chiang Kai-shek who was driven from the mainland to the island by his old enemy, but the Philippines which has been flying the American flag since the end of the 19th century.

　In later generations, when people mention the Philippines, their first reaction is Filipino maids, followed by bananas and some random short movies.

　It seems that the Philippines has always been a poor country that exports its women to foreign countries as maids or even prostitutes to make money.

　But who could have imagined that in the early days of the Cold War, the Philippines was once the richest country in Asia?

　As early as the 1930s, the United States began lavishly investing in efforts to transform the Philippines into an industrial base. Although this plan was interrupted by the Japanese invasion, the Americans returned and resumed the aforementioned support program.

　Since the end of World War II, the Philippines has once again become a key investment and construction target for the United States in Asia.