Complete 9 page APA formatted essay: Japan's Industries.Download file to see previous pages... This paper examines the rise and growing role of Asian-Pacific businesses in the global economy. It will

Complete 9 page APA formatted essay: Japan's Industries.

This paper examines the rise and growing role of Asian-Pacific businesses in the global economy. It will analyse the growth of FDI from nations in the Asian-Pacific, particularly Japan, China and South Korea. The research will review the trends and expansionist strategies employed by multinational enterprises from these nations and evaluate how they managed to attain successes on the global level. Japanese Businesses The Japanese European Trade Organisation (JETRO) studied a number of things about the expansion if Japanese businesses into Europe (Sachwald, 1995). They identified five main motives for the expansion of Japanese businesses into Europe. First of all, Japanese businesses sought to expand into Europe for production reasons. Geographically, Japan has not been a very rich island in terms of natural resources. As such, their expansionist drives into foreign nations included the desire to acquire much needed raw materials. Thus, the establishment of foreign companies enabled them to establish production systems with their technology and capital and produce at points close to the customers that they previously exported to. Secondly, the cost of energy and electricity has been traditionally high. Japanese expansionist ideology was to make use of cheap electricity and energy costs. Again, Japan has always been an overpopulated island. Due to that, land costs are generally higher. The expansion into foreign lands enabled Japanese businesses to economise and save significantly on rent. Other costs like pollution and transport costs were significantly lower in other parts of the world. Thus, Japanese businesses expanded to foreign lands to take advantage of these production related advantages. Secondly, Japanese businesses moved to different parts of the world in order to develop new markets. In the 1970s, Japanese businesses had exported large volumes of products to people in different parts of the world. However, they realised that by establishing branches in parts of the world, they were able to get direct access to the market and localise to meet the actual demands and expectations of the foreign markets. The third reason that JETRO identified for Japanese FDI is the need to avoid trade friction. Japan had undergone a lot of persecution and resentment from nations around the world for their roles in the Second World War. Their exports were of high quality and were bound to receive some kind of resentment from producers of lower quality goods. It was thus natural for Japanese businesses to expect some degree of trade friction in foreign countries. To avoid the effects of these trade wars, some Japanese businesses chose to establish foreign branches of their company in other parts of the world. The fourth reason for the growth in the number of Japanese multinational enterprises (MNEs) was the need and desire to acquire information and new technology. Japan realized that nations like America and Germany had abundant human resource and technology. It was therefore more prudent to site operations in these nations to take advantage of the technology and highly trained personnel. The fifth reason uncovered in the survey was Japanese businesses' financial advantages that came with international expansion.