Japan's development assistance was not motivated by benevolence. The infrastructure investments they made across Asia was for two reasons.
First - they had an over-abundance of construction capacity after the post war economic boom. They needed to push this capacity onto other countries. This also motivated China's BRI projects in the late 2008s and 2010s.
Second - as you mentioned in the 80s manufacturing was based around regional supply chains. In order to make Japanese manufacturing competitive with North America and the EU (which was expanding into Southern and Eastern Europe) they invest in their neighbours. To enable these manufacturing supply chains in Asia Japan also had to build the infrastructure.
America also invested its overcapacity into Latin America. First in the early 20th century to push out British. The second after WW2 to compete with communism. Both times the Latin Americans wasted this opportunity to industrialise. They defaulted on their debts both times. Mexico might actually make it this time around despite all their challenges.
Thank you for this great continuation of the chip topic.
Japan's development assistance was not motivated by benevolence. The infrastructure investments they made across Asia was for two reasons.
First - they had an over-abundance of construction capacity after the post war economic boom. They needed to push this capacity onto other countries. This also motivated China's BRI projects in the late 2008s and 2010s.
Second - as you mentioned in the 80s manufacturing was based around regional supply chains. In order to make Japanese manufacturing competitive with North America and the EU (which was expanding into Southern and Eastern Europe) they invest in their neighbours. To enable these manufacturing supply chains in Asia Japan also had to build the infrastructure.
America also invested its overcapacity into Latin America. First in the early 20th century to push out British. The second after WW2 to compete with communism. Both times the Latin Americans wasted this opportunity to industrialise. They defaulted on their debts both times. Mexico might actually make it this time around despite all their challenges.
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