Sunday, 10 June 2007How to bridge the China-Japan divideCOLUMN: Ethical Corp, Japan and China
Together Japan and China can learn from past mistakes and solve many of their current problems,Chandran Nair
A legacy of the victims of Minamata disease in Japan – where mercury pollution led to nearly 2,000 deaths – is the promise of environmental hope for China. The countries’ leaders hold the key. With anything involving China, there is global potential.
In the half-century since Minamata’s frightening symptoms were first described, Japan has transformed itself from an industrial polluter chasing economic development at any cost. It has become a world leader in environmental protection, in developing and implementing pollution-control technologies and in energy technology.
Minamata disease is the most notorious of Japan’s four big pollution diseases. It was named after the city whose people it killed. Industrial wastewater heavy with mercury dumped from a chemical factory poisoned local fish and shellfish. When eaten they caused nervous-system damage and eventually death.
Thousands suffered and died from pollution diseases. If anything positive came of them, it was an understanding of the importance of environmental integrity and how industrial growth directly impacts health, the environment and society.
Japan took a new approach to industrial development. It established leading technology in energy efficiency, air-pollution control, water conservation and purification, and wastewater treatment. The new approach incorporates an environmental and social ethic in daily business operations, which is generally applied with ritual diligence, even if there are still a few laggards.
Now China, with industry driving its rapid economic development, faces similar challenges. But the scale is unprecedented. China’s growing demand for resources and in particular energy to fuel its own hunger for, first, the essentials and, second, modern consumerism presents worrying possibilities, not least for its environment.
Even with some of the most rigid national environmental laws on its books, China’s decentralised political structure makes enforcement on a provincial and local level a challenge at best. But in looking to Japan, China can find some solutions. Beijing and Tokyo have begun a promising diplomatic thaw. In April, China overtook the US as Japan’s biggest trading partner, strengthening a deepening economic integration.
More to the point is the new Japanese industrial model’s rich bank of ingenuity, including for example, leading the way in developing hybrid technology with Toyota’s Prius.
The challenge for Hu Jintao and Shinzo Abe, the leaders of China and Japan respectively, is to lead a renaissance of Sino-Japanese co-operation, putting aside past animosities. They must find commercial opportunities between Japan’s technological brilliance and clever design and China’s growing industrial muscle to benefit the environment at large.
For now, industrial joint ventures in China focus on more traditional sectors: automotive, electronics, chemicals, and household goods. But the potential of joint ventures and co-operation in marketing energy and environmental efficiencies using established Japanese know-how must be vast.
Taking these Japanese technologies, designs goods and services to China’s huge market will bring them into an arena where until now they have been considered too expensive. China can help Japan get these technologies into common use in China and internationally.
Less a technology transfer and more a symbiosis that attends to the realities of capitalism, this has the potential to influence a change in China’s business approach. The two nations can take advantage of individual national strengths: China’s manufacturing mass, and Japan’s ingenuity with technology.
China needs to realise that it has delayed introducing excellent technology for too long by demanding its own terms. Its giants, like Haier, Legend, and Anshan Iron and Steel, need to seize this opportunity.
Japanese companies need to meet China halfway and see the potential in realising their technology. They need to be very creative in protecting their intellectual property. China needs to move swiftly on the Action Plan on Intellectual Property Rights Protection announced in April and resolve abuses.
Beyond the profits, China and the world can look to how Japan’s industrial model set out on its new path to environmental and energy efficiency in the shadow of Minamata, and took it upon itself to educate the public.
Chandran Nair is the founder and chief executive of Global Institute For Tomorrow.
This column by Chandran Nair appears in the June 2007 issue of the Ethical Corporation magazine.
Keywords: Ethical Corp, Japan, China, Hu Jintao, Shinzo Abe, pollution, ecology, environment, Minamata, industry, sustainable development, co-operation
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