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Tokyo Japan Fears China May Put an End to 'Made in Japan' By James Brooke New York Times, Nov. 20, 2001 Last spring, Toshiba stopped making televisions in Japan, turning to its factories in China to supply the market here. Soon Minolta announced that it was phasing out camera production in Japan and would import from Shanghai instead.
Just last month, like falling dominoes, several other Japanese manufacturers announced plans to import bicycles, motorcycles, buses and cellphones from their Chinese factories.
"We look at China as the most important growth market," said Yukio Shotoku, overseas managing director for Matsushita Electric, the world's largest consumer electronics group. His company is closing 11 factories and pushing 8,000 workers into early retirement in Japan, whose labor costs he described as "the biggest headache."
Contiains note about how China competes with low energy costs as well as low labor costs.
1. Energy and sustainable development 2. Structure and trends of energy consumption in industries 3. Potentials for energy efficiency improvements in industries 4. Barriers to energy efficiency investments 4.1 Pay-back period criterion 4.2 Subsidized energy prices 4.3 Capital availability, capital costs, uncertainty and risks 4.4 Information,
There are great disparities in access to modern forms of energy, in particular in access to electricity. Whilst in the industrialized world per capita consumption of electricity reaches or exceeds 8000 kWh per capita per year, the same in the lesser and least developed countries remains low, sometimes even below 400 kWh per capita per year. This fact suggests that the average levels of consumption between countries can differ by as much as a factor of 20.
The improvement of energy efficiency in production and consumption has been a continuous part of capitalist progress. Yet, this same capitalist system winds up causing workers in advanced nations consume an even greater amount of energy though the expansion of automobile/suburban consumption model.