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China: Japan hurts trade with words

Kyodo

BEIJING – Hurtful words and actions by Japan and its politicians are partly to blame for the way Chinese trade with Japan has been slumping since early this year, a Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman said Friday.

In the first seven months, bilateral trade fell 8.8 percent year-on-year to $174 billion, spokesman Shen Danyang said, saying China’s imports of Japanese goods sank 13.2 percent to $90.81 billion and exports to Japan fell 3.5 percent to $83.19 billion.

Shen said a recent analysis by his ministry identified three main factors for the decline in Sino-Japanese trade.

Among them, he said, “wrong words and actions” by the Japanese government and its politicians have “seriously hurt the feelings of Chinese people” and turned Chinese consumers away from Japanese goods, sparking declines in car, appliance and machinery parts sales.

Trade between the world’s second- and third-largest economies has fallen sharply since Japan effectively nationalized the Senkaku islets last September.

Another factor Shen cited was the U.S. and EU market slumps, which he said chilled demand for Chinese goods and pressured China’s imports of raw materials and components from Japan.

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  • Gene Sasserky

    What typical Chinese nonsense. The only things that have hurt the trade is China’s anti-Japan forced “patriotic education”, anti-Japan political and diplomatic policies and
    China’s aggressive territorial expansion.

  • y2k

    Uh..I guess we’ll just ignore Japanese nationalistic rhetoric too.

  • YoDude12

    …so if Japanese exports to China and S. Korea have dropped substantially, resulting in higher inventories in Japan, what could help to reduce those inventories? I know, we’ll call it “Dudenomics.” Let’s say we are trying to increase inflation to counter deflation and its evil effects. Add a dose of quantitative easing, to help spur some of that inflation, and viola, start exporting your inventories to countries where, over the last year, there has been a 25% decrease in relative price due to the quantitative easing. We won’t stop there. Let’s also add a measure of…..and a bit of ….., and those companies we will go work for when we retire from politics will be in much better shape, and while we’re at it we can get rich off of the short term gains in the stock market.
    Funny, the lower income doesn’t seem to be gaining anything from this. No new livable-wage jobs of any quantity. Companies aren’t investing in new infrastructure domestically. Instead, they are opening up factories in Myanmar. Funny…