Xie Zhihai “Japanese Market Hereafter Depends on India ?”

Rapid progress of technologies and internet has made the world “borderless”. However, international issues became more complicated though it seems to be a contradiction to borderless. For scholars or analysts of economics, it is very difficult to forecast the economy or the international situation of the year 2016.

 

Present anxieties for the world economy are decline in oil prices, slow down of the Chinese economy, opaque future of the economy in EU and difficulties in the growth of US enterprises.

Furthermore, the Bank of Japan announced “Negative Interest Rate” first in the end of January.  After the announcement, the Nikkei Stock Average fluctuated violently and has kept on declining. According to the Nikkei (newspaper) which I gave a once-over,  an analyst of the stock market says “in order to turn the Nikkei Stock Average to an upward trend, it is necessary to have a new theme like acceleration of progress of the economy of India”.

I pay attention to India, not ASEAN.

 

India is now attracting world attention not only in its economy but also in various phenomena. As I live in Japan, I cannot get information about India as expected, although the Japanese people like Indian-curry.  India, a faraway country, is now becoming familiar to Japanese.

Masayoshi Son, president of Soft Bank, chose an Indian, not a Japanese, as his successor.

This news, together with the huge amount of his officer’s compensation, made the headline all over the world. At the same time, we came to know that Mr. Son invested huge amounts of money on enterprises in India.  Since Indian Prime Minister Naredra Modi’s visit to Japan in 2014, the Japanese people have now become interested about India.

 

Does the economic growth of India have a power to push up the Nikkei Stock Average? The more we know about the country and people of India, the more we realize that Japan and India stand in the exact opposite positions: Japan is ahead as an aging society, but low in birth-rate.

On the other hand, the population under 25 years old in India is about 50% and its population density is high. They do not control their population like China. Population in India is increasing. We are overwhelmed by such energetic image.

 

We notice now that India is producing many excellent business executives to the world. We can see a lot of Indian CEO names in the world’s big enterprises. The Nikkei Business (magazine), issue of September 28, 2015 featured under the title “Indian CEO control the world” and analyzed three points as the reasons for “why Indian CEO?”

 ―Large number of men of talent who have IT skills, for example, which can be used in the world.

 ―Way of thinking or management styles which are set forth for assumption of diversity

 ―Patience, creativities and response capabilities all of which have been developed by its severe circumstances.

It comes as no surprise that these three points affect the Japanese economy. These three points may be insufficient in the Japanese people. For this reason, Mr. Son did not choose a Japanese CEO as his successor.

 

I am not saying India is stronger than Japan. There are a lot of troubles in India like the deep-rooted caste systems, confrontation among religions as India has various religions or a male-dominant society.  I think they can live in the global world only after they crawl their way up from such a complicated society.

 

Both in China, my home country and in Japan, where I am living now, people are still interested in India these days.

 

(Full-time Lecturer of Maebashi Kyoai Gakuen University)

 

 

Translate by Kazuo Kawamura

English checked by Mac Maquito

 

SGRA Kawaraban 484 in Japanese(original )