日本制造业的出路

英國《金融時報》 喬納森 - 索布爾

去年6月，日本豐田汽車(Toyota Motor)總裁豐田章男(Akio Toyoda)對日本最看重的經濟資產——競爭力和制造能力——發表了直言不諱的評價。“從邏輯的角度來看，”他在宣布對豐田國內業務進行重組時說：“在日本制造是不合理的。”日元的大幅升值，導致豐田重組在資金方面消耗巨大。

“日本公司(Japan Incorporated)”的辦公室和工廠里都敲響了警鐘。匯率、去年海嘯造成的電力短缺、不利的稅收和貿易政策，以及中國和韓國的強勢崛起，都使得過去從未受到挑戰的日本汽車和電子制造商面臨日益增大的壓力，被迫向低成本生產地撤離。政客、商界領導人和媒體警告，如果不采取措施，為日本戰后經濟增長做出巨大貢獻的工業可能陷入無可逆轉的下滑——而日本擺脫20年經濟低迷的希望也將隨之破滅。“我們正處于空前的空心化危機中，” 日本首相野田佳彥(Yoshihiko Noda)去年9月表示。

對制造業下滑感到絕望，并不是什么完全新鮮的事情，也不是日本所獨有的。與其它富裕國家的情況一樣，參與實物產品制造的工人比例多年來一直不斷下降：從1970年的27%，降至當前的17%。根據總部位于巴黎的經合組織(OECD)的統計數據，日本的這一比例處于英美（僅十分之一的工人從事制造業）和德意（這一比例為大約20%）的水平之間。

但對日本而言，工業地位下降的前景尤其令人擔憂。自20世紀90年代日本經濟泡沫破裂以來，工人平均實際收入下降了10%，而更多報酬不錯的制造業就業崗位的喪失，將加速這一下降趨勢。盡管官方失業數字仍然很低，僅略高于4%，但政府計算，如果公司根據實際需求水平裁減工人人數，這一數字將上升2倍以上。目前，這一結局被有利于工人的勞動法、政府就業補貼（有時被稱為閑置就業人員救濟）和戰后遺留的“終身雇傭”計劃推遲了，但它不可能永遠得到避免。

更廣泛而言，日本的工業問題與該國在世界舞臺上地位日漸衰落是一致的。20年前，日本經濟產出占全球GDP的14%；如今，只占不到9%。即使在亞洲，它作為經濟和外交大國的光芒也已被中國掩去。

或許最令人擔憂的是，日本的許多人似乎相信，如果制造業沒落，日本將再無可依靠；日本工人獨一無二地適合“造物”(monozukuri)——一種近乎神秘的“造物”理念。他們指出，日本在軟件和金融這樣的行業，缺乏“國家冠軍企業”，同時，服務業效率低下，工人平均產出不及美國水平的一半。當制造業公司陷入困境時——比如豐田2009年的召回事件，或者奧林巴斯(Olympus)正在上演的會計丑聞——全國都感到深深的恥辱。

“日本整個的身份認知是與制造業聯系在一起的，”社交游戲公司Gree創始人田中良和(Yoshikazu Tanaka)表示。“如果你不生產實物產品，人們對待你的態度，就好像你在做什么靠不住的事。”

實際上，有證據顯示，制造業向海外的轉移正在加速。自日元兌美元匯率從2007年年中開始其高達40%的升值過程以來，日本對外凈外國直接投資從21世紀頭5年的平均300億-500億美元，飆升至2008年的1300億美元。目前仍處于長期趨勢水平之上。而在日本國內，企業資本投資則一直持續下降。

積極進軍海外的公司和沒有這樣做的公司之間，業績差異十分明顯。豐田大約50%的汽車在日本生產，在日本的銷量低于出口量，預計在截至3月的財年中，凈利潤將下降一半。相反，日產(Nissan)只在國內生產四分之一的汽車，預計利潤下降9%。

“如果日本想要就業，就必須做點什么，來確立正常的匯率，”日產CEO卡洛斯 - 戈恩(Carlos Ghosn)最近警告。他希望東京方面拋棄間歇性的、基本無效的市場干預，東京方面自2010年底開始嘗試瑞士式的、不惜一切代價維護匯率上限的干預方式。

日本的問題由于去年的自然災難而變得更為復雜。3月的地震和海嘯，以及后來的泰國洪水，毀壞了日本的工廠，使供應鏈陷入混亂。盡管許多公司恢復得比預期快——在去年4月份暴跌15%之后，全國工業產出在8月前就恢復到接近正常的水平——但對日本商業的影響還將繼續。

問題之一是能源成本。由于其它發電站被迫停運，等待安全檢查，海嘯對福島第一核電站(Fukushima Daiichi)的毀壞，導致了其它地區的電力短缺。這提升了人們對于長期定量配給和提價的預期，而日本公司為電力支付的價格已經比美國高40%，比韓國高1.5倍，這部分上是因為電力部門的壟斷。福島第一核電站所有者東京電力公司(Tokyo Electric Power)希望將東京及周邊地區的電價提高15%，以彌補賠償和清理成本，這一提議遭到商界的強烈反對。“電力問題是與日元匯率一樣嚴重的阻礙因素，”打印機及投影儀生產商精工愛普生(Seiko Epson)總裁碓井稔(Minoru Usui)表示。

海嘯和外匯市場或許不在日本控制范圍之內，但產業及政府領導人也在“自掘墳墓”。例如，許多公司支持所謂的“加拉帕戈斯群島”(Galapagos)技術，這是一種日本的小發明，流傳不廣，因為它們僅僅是根據本地需求定制的。一個經典的案例是移動電話。日本早在iPhone出現10年前，就有了網絡沖浪手機，但本地生產商從未嘗試涉足海外市場，也未能更新它們的設計。如今，就連在國內市場，它們的份額也在喪失，蘋果(Apple)風靡全球的產品成了這里最暢銷的機型。

與此同時，商界人士稱，政府政策不鼓勵國內投資和招聘。他們指出，勞動法規造成了沉重負擔，企業稅率過高（為41%，而經合組織平均為26%），出口商支付的關稅高于韓國和其它地方的競爭者。重建海嘯侵襲過后的東北部地區的龐大成本，將使日本本已“舉世無雙”的公共債務（高達GDP的200%）雪上加霜，這進一步加大了削減企業稅提案獲得通過的難度。

當然，并非日本所有工業的前景都一片黯淡。出人意料的是，2011年的災難提醒人們：日本在一些重要、但通常被忽視了的領域，比如精密零件和材料，仍然具有比較優勢。例如，僅日本半導體生產商瑞薩(Renesas)一家，就供應著全球汽車用微控制器的近一半產品，這一點令許多人感到吃驚。當生產這種設備——它負責移動座椅、鎖門和打開電動窗——的工廠由于地震沖擊而停工時，從日本汽車制造中心名古屋到亞拉巴馬州的組裝工廠都陷入停頓。

日本零件制造商的優勢，在去年10月波音(Boeing) 787夢幻客機(787 Dreamliner)的首飛中，也得以突顯。該機型三分之一的高科技部件是在日本生產的。材料生產集團東麗(Toray)供應的輕型碳纖維零件，使這一機型比過去的飛機更節省燃油。東麗或許不是索尼(Sony)那樣家喻戶曉的品牌，但它也許能夠代表日本制造業最具競爭力的部分。

到目前為止，大部分公司都選擇把最先進的高價值產品留在日本生產，把低利潤產品的生產轉移到海外更廉價的地方。對單個公司而言，這一戰略或多或少地發揮了作用，但專家對它是否能維持大規模就業表示懷疑，尤其是隨著中國這樣的大型新興經濟體向工業價值鏈上游移動，生產越來越精密的產品。

日本財經日報《日本經濟新聞》(Nikkei)撰稿人、工業專家團體Beyond Galapagos Study Group成員關口和一(Waichi Sekiguchi)認為，由于技術本身的變化令日本制造商以工程為核心的商業模式變得過時，成本競爭力和日元升值只是枝節問題。“在全球競爭圍繞單個產品展開、以最低價格生產最棒產品的公司成為贏家的時代，這種模式運轉得非常成功，”他表示。“但在網絡為王的數字電子世界，它就遜色得多。”

關口和一在《重新想象日本》(Reimagining Japan)一書中對自己的觀點進行了闡述，這是一本分析和政策建議集，由咨詢公司麥肯錫(McKinsey)去年出版。這本書的其他撰稿者表示，如果日本經濟死胡同有更好的出口，而制造業會從這些出口挖走更多資源，那么過分強調拯救制造業甚至可能反而有害。“實物產品制造代表著日本的過去，而不是未來，”日本電信集團軟銀(Softbank)創始人孫正義(Masayoshi Son)表示。“勞動密集型產業無法令日本復興……對日本而言，知識密集型產業是唯一的出路。而我們的政府政策還沒有以這些產業為重心。”政府政策主要集中于維護“造物”文化的遺產。在支離破碎的電子行業，政府正努力加速整合，創造“國家冠軍企業”：政府最近支持了索尼、東芝(Toshiba)和日立(Hitachi)旗下小型液晶顯示企業的合并。政府希望，新公司能夠更好地與韓國和臺灣企業競爭。

但政策制定者也已認識到多樣化的需要，并正著眼于以“無需敲銅打鐵”的行業作為潛在增長領域，包括旅游、漫畫和時尚。“日本風”在其它地方十分流行，但日本文化產業只有2%的產出用于出口。

日本金融服務公司歐力士(Orix)首席執行官、倡導將高度受保護的服務業自由化的宮內義彥(Yoshihiko Miyauchi)，還列出了日本擁有優勢、但在國際市場上地位不足的其它領域——從送貨服務到便利店和醫療。“日本可以擁有亞洲的梅約醫學中心(Mayo Clinic)，”他表示，梅約醫學中心是位于美國明尼蘇達州的著名私人醫院，吸引了來自全球的富人患者。

對于制造業，他寧愿看到公司將生產轉移到海外而蓬勃發展，而不是留在日本枯萎。“當日本公司走向世界時，它們變得更強。而那些試圖在國內拼出出路的公司，現在才掙扎難熬。”

譯者/方舟

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In search of salvation

Last June, Akio Toyoda, president of Japan’s Toyota Motor, delivered a blunt appraisal of his country’s most cherished economic asset: its competitiveness as a manufacturing power. “If you look at it logically,” he said as he announced a reorganisation of the carmaker’s domestic operations, which were haemorrhaging money as a result of a soaring yen, “it doesn’t make sense to manufacture in Japan.”

Alarm bells are ringing in the offices and factories of Japan Incorporated. The currency, electricity shortages caused by last year’s tsunami, unfavourable tax and trade policies and the relentless rise of China and South Korea are heaping pressure on the country’s once unchallenged makers of cars and electronics to decamp for lower-cost locations. Politicians, business leaders and the media warn that, if nothing is done, the industries responsible for much of Japan’s postwar growth could fall into irreversible decline – and drag the country’s chances of pulling itself out of a 20-year economic malaise with them. “We are in unprecedented danger of hollowing out,” Yoshihiko Noda, prime minister, said in September.

Handwringing over the decline of manufacturing is not entirely new, nor is it unique to Japan. The share of the workforce involved making physical objects, as in other wealthy countries, has been shrinking for years: from 27 per cent in 1970 to 17 per cent today. That has left it somewhere between the UK and the US, where only one in 10 workers is in manufacturing; and Germany and Italy, where the figure is about 20 per cent, according to statistics collected by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Yet for Japan, the prospect of industrial irrelevance is especially worrying. Since the country’s economic bubble burst in the 1990s, real income per worker has fallen by 10 per cent and the loss of more well paid manufacturing jobs would accelerate the downward trend. Although official unemployment remains low, at a little more than 4 per cent, the government calculates that the rate would increase more than threefold if companies cut their workforces to match the actual level of demand. So far, that outcome has been deferred by worker-friendly labour laws, government job subsidies, sometimes called a dole for the idle employed, and the legacy of postwar “lifetime employment” schemes but it is unlikely to be avoidable for ever.

More broadly, Japan’s industrial prob­lems have coincided with the country’s shrinking role on the world stage. Two decades ago, its economic output accounted for 14 per cent of global gross domestic product; today, it is less than 9 per cent. Even in Asia, it has been eclipsed by China as an economic and a diplomatic power.

Perhaps most worryingly, many in Japan appear to believe the country has nothing to fall back on if manufacturing fails; that its workers are uniquely suited to monozukuri, the almost mystical concept of “making things”. They point to a scarcity of national champions in industries such as software and finance and to the inefficient services sector, where output per worker is less than half the US level. When manufacturing companies stumble – as in Toyota’s recalls in 2009 or the ongoing accounting scandal at Olympus – the sense of national embarrassment is keen.

“Japan’s whole identity is tied to manufacturing,” says Yoshikazu Tanaka, founder of Gree, a social gaming company. “If you’re not producing actual material objects, people treat you as though you’re doing something dodgy.”

There is indeed evidence that manufacturing’s shift abroad has accelerated. Since the yen began its 40 per cent climb against the dollar in mid-2007, net outbound foreign direct investment has jumped from an average of $30bn-$50bn in the first half of the 2000s to $130bn in 2008. It remains above its long-term trend. Domestically, corporate capital investment has been falling.

The performance gap between companies that have moved overseas aggressively and those that have not is stark. Toyota makes about 50 per cent of its cars in Japan, where it sells fewer units than it exports, and expects net profit to halve in the fiscal year to March. In contrast, Nissan, which makes only one-quarter of its vehicles domestically, forecasts a profit decline of 9 per cent.

“If Japan wants employment, you’re going to have to do something about establishing a normal exchange rate,” Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s chief executive, warned recently. He wants Tokyo to ditch the sporadic and mostly ineffective market interventions it has tried since late 2010 in favour of a Swiss-style currency ceiling that it would defend at all costs.

The country’s problems have been compounded by last year’s natural disasters. The March earthquake and tsunami, and more recent floods in Thailand, damaged Japanese factories and threw supply chains into disarray. Although many companies recovered faster than expected – national industrial output was back to near normal levels by August, after plunging 15 per cent in April – its effect on business in the country will linger.

One problem is the cost of energy. The destruction of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station by the tsunami has led to electricity shortages elsewhere, as other plants have been forced offline pending safety reviews. That has raised the prospect of long-term rationing and rising prices in a country where companies already pay 40 per cent more for electricity than do their peers in the US and 2.5 times more than South Korean groups, a consequence, in part, of the power sector’s monopolistic structure. Tokyo Electric Power, owner of the Fukushima plant, wants to raise tariffs in Tokyo and the surrounding area by 15 per cent to cover its compensation and clean-up costs – a proposal strongly opposed by business. “The electricity issue is as big a headwind as the strong yen,” says Minoru Usui, president of Seiko Epson, the maker of printers and video projectors.

Tsunamis and currency markets may be outside Japan’s control but industry and government leaders have also inflicted wounds on themselves. Many companies, for instance, have backed so-called Galapagos technologies – Japanese gadgets that travel poorly because they are tailored too narrowly to local requirements. A classic case is the mobile phone. Japan had internet-surfing handsets nearly a decade before the iPhone, yet local producers never tapped overseas markets and failed to update their designs. Today, they are surrendering share even at home, where Apple’s globally popular device is the best-selling model.

Meanwhile, businesspeople say government policy discourages investment and hiring at home. They cite burdensome labour rules, a high corporate tax rate (41 per cent against an OECD average of 26 per cent) and the fact exporters pay higher duties than competitors in South Korea and elsewhere. The huge cost of repairing the Tohoku coast following the tsunami will add to Japan’s already unparalleled public debt of 200 per cent of GDP, making the case for cutting business taxes harder to win.

Not all the country’s industry is doomed, of course. Paradoxically, the disasters of 2011 served as a reminder that the country retains competitive advantages in important but often overlooked areas, such as precision components and materials. Many people were surprised to learn, for instance, that a single Japanese semiconductor maker, Renesas, supplies nearly half the microcontrollers used in automobiles worldwide. When the factory that produces the devices, which move seats, lock doors and wind down power windows, was knocked out of commission by the quake, assembly plants from the Japanese carmaking hub of Nagoya to Alabama ground to a standstill.

The strength of Japanese component-makers was also highlighted by the debut passenger flight of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner in October, a third of whose high-tech parts were made in Japan. Toray, the materials group that supplies the lightweight carbon- fibre elements that make the model more fuel efficient than older aircraft, may not be a household name such as Sony but it represents what is arguably the most competitive corner of Japanese manufacturing.

So far, most companies have chosen to keep making their most cutting-edge, high-value products in Japan, while shifting production of low-margin goods to cheaper sites abroad. The strategy has worked to a greater or lesser degree for individual groups but experts doubt it will preserve large-scale employment, especially as big emerging economies such as China move up the industrial value chain to produce increasingly sophisticated goods.

Waichi Sekiguchi, a writer at Japan’s Nikkei business daily and member of the Beyond Galapagos Study Group of industry experts, argues that cost competitiveness and the yen are side issues, as changes in technology itself have made Japanese manufacturers’ engineering-focused business model obsolete. “That model worked wondrously well when global competition revolved around individual products and the winners were the companies that made the best products at the cheapest price,” he says. “But it makes much less sense in the world of digital electronics where the network is king.”

Mr Sekiguchi makes his case in Reimagining Japan, a collection of analysis and policy recommendations published last year by McKinsey, the consultancy. Other contributors to the book say an excessive focus on saving manufacturing may even be harmful if it draws resources from more promising exits from the economic cul-de-sac. “Nuts and bolts are Japan’s past, not its future,” argues Masayoshi Son, founder of Japanese telecoms group Softbank. “No labour-intensive industry can revive Japan . . . for Japan, knowledge-intensive industries are the only way forward. And yet our government policies are not focused on such industries.” Official policy is focused mostly on preserving what is left of monozukuri. In the fragmented electronics sector, the government is trying to speed up consolidation and create national champions: it recently backed a merger of the small liquid crystal display businesses of Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi. It hopes the new entity will be better able to compete with Korean and Taiwanese groups.

Yet policymakers have also recognised the need to diversify and are targeting non-metal-bashing industries as potential growth areas, including tourism, manga comics and fashion. Japanese styles are popular elsewhere, yet its cultural industries export only about 2 per cent of output.

Yoshihiko Miyauchi, chief executive of Japanese financial services company Orix and an advocate of liberalising the highly protected services sector, lists other areas where the country is strong but under-represented in global markets – from delivery services to convenience stores and medical care. “Japan could have the Mayo Clinic of Asia,” he says, referring to the renowned private hospital in Minnesota that attracts wealthy patients from around the world.

As for manufacturing, he would rather see companies shift production abroad and thrive than stay and wither. “When Japanese companies go out into the world, they get stronger. It’s the companies that try to fight it out at home that are struggling.”