Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Behind Asia" channel.

  1. What a dissertation. There is more about the (partial) decline of Japanese electronics corporations than the US government punishing Toshiba, surely. Japan is still a global electronics giant. It is just not as colossal as it once was in the past and there are reasons for this: Firstly labour costs. While Japan is similar to Taiwan now in labour costs, assembling electronics (without robots) is fairly labour intensive, hence rely on paying workers. This is why Foxconn (a Taiwanese company) moved into China in the first place. Foxconn only assembles electronics. To a degree, this also happened with Japanese companies like NEC and Panasonic. Everyone is leaving China now, not just because of unfriendly totalitarian policies, but rising cost of workers wages in China in comparison to Vietnam and India. Secondly keeping abreast of the game. Electronics is a technological fast moving feast (i.e. rapidly changing). Take your eyes off the ball for only half a decade and someone else has moved past you. R & D is expensive and usually takes at least 10 years to take off commercially. You have to be persistent and clever with R & D to muscle in to the market. And the Chinese steal a lot. Thirdly, innovation. Japanese corporations were innovative from the late 1950s through to the 1980s, but dropped the ball after that. Japan missed out on the software evolution (Microsoft and Google for example) and has further missed out on the smart phone innovations, which were captured by the Americans (Apple) and the South Koreans (Samsung).
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  2. The story of Malayasia's auto industry is the same for Australia (domestic protectionism over export), except Australia began the process of making cars 3 decades earlier than Malaysia. Most of Australia's car manufacturing industry no longer exists. Malayasia auto industry might go the same way soon. Really, governments and businesses can be amazingly stupid on economics.
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  3. I don't think that's a definition of democracy. You need party pluralism, universal suffrage, parliamentary privilege and statutory law voting, independent judiciary, habeas corpus and above all, private property legal rights. I'm not trying to conflate this with nationalism either, these are just essential mechanisms to work a democracy.
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  4. Japan is still a major player in the electronics industry. In particularly with optical systems, such as cameras in smart phone. The famous Sony corporation has moved into this niche area. Japanese cameras are still no. 1. Most cameras now are electonic-optical devices.
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  5. These figures may hold up (in foreign reserves) for China, but like Japan, their economy is getting more and more moribund and stagnant at home. Japan has significant foreign reserve still, but their consumption and goods and services economy at home is not increasing average consumer wealth there. Wages have stagnated in Japan for a long time, so that Japan banks have zero or even negative interest rates. China is now "Japanizing" at higher speed than Japan even did in the 1990s. It might, like Japan, hold significant foreign reserves, but this means nothing to the average person.
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  6. 14 knots, for a frigqte?? Shouldn't it do at least 25 knots? One thing needed for a warship is fairly high manoeuvre speed, this enables the vessel to make it a more difficult moving target and it also improves offensive capabilities as the warship closes more quickly with the surface or underwater target. So I would say, speed is still important for a warship. Slow warships are generally less effective.
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  7. At the end of the Showa era, Japan abandoned the predatory Co Prosperity Sphere and grew corporations at home (e.g Sony, Panasonic, Toyota) which became multinational corporations. These Japanese corporations when pursuing their goals post world war 2 put fair competition, research and development, consumer interface and satisfaction, quality control and quality build and so on before nationalism, technology theft and in cutting corners in their product (this is opposite to what CCP China has done). Not only has this made Japan sustainably rich, but their brand names very well known and respected globally for decades.
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  8. The VCP heeded Deng Xiaoping's reforms and implemented it nearly a decade later. Unlike Xi Jinping that wanted the old failed model of state controlled enterprise back again; that may have lead China to it's current deflation. Plus the One Child Policy implementee by Deng; that was a huge demographic aging mistake that Vietnam avoided. Vietnam has problems, but charismatic dictatorship that plagued China, particularly under Mao Zedong, the Soviet Union under Stalin and all the Kims of North Korea has somehow luckily escaped Vietnam. Maybe it's a cultural trait of the Vietnamese not to have the cult of personality in their top leaders.
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  9. Australia is about to pass into a "Japanization" deflation once it's property bubble bursts. Very soon. Like Japan, Australia has a rapidly aging population 😮🩼
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  10. TR-55 radio is collectable now. Anyone has a good working one now is worth thousands of dollars.
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  11. It's Uncle Sam (the United States) and no, the Philippines is not an American puppet. That's delusional politics and propaganda, Vietnam has a very big and recurring problem to it's North.
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  12. I've heard; "we build submarines not to wage war". Au contraire, why build them in the first place? Submarines are designed to sink ships by stealth. Clearly the VPN intends to make at least a few PLAN ships to kiss the mud at the bottom of the sea. Revenge for Battle of Johnson South Reef massacre, 1988..
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  13. When my grandmother was born in 1901, there was not even electronics invented yet (the thermionic value was first invented in 1904). Amazing how far electronics has come in 120 years.
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  14. Actually, arms deals between the US and Vietnam is a deterrance to the PLAN and PLA expansionism in SE Asia, so the CCP will naturally whine about it. Cold War 2 has already started, way back in 2014, when the PLA started making artificial islands for military bases in the South China Sea, and in 1988 when the PLA forced out at Vietnamese garrison out of Johnson South Reef. The arms deal is partially game changing. The US might want to sell javelin missiles as well to Vietnam to enhance tactical defence of the Vietnamese army in the case of a land invasion of Vietnam's northern or eastern borders by the PLA. This happened before in 1979 (under Deng Xiaoping), just 40 years ago, so the Vietnamese government is acutely aware of it's own land defence and the US wants now to bolster the status quo in SE Asia, including stopping PLA expansion into SE Asia. Vietnam is on board with this; i am uncertain of how the CCP has corrupted Cambodia or Myanmar into infringing it's own defences. Hence Vietnam is also forced to look westwards these days to it's long eastern borders. An acute geopolitical problem with Vietnam.
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  15. The UK failed to become an industrilal powerhouse, post World-War 2. So it's the pot calling the kettle black. Far too late now for the UK to recover industrially, wheras Malaysia may still have a chance with better governance.
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