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How Japan is willingly ceding the future to China
The next blow to the collective Japanese psyche will be falling behind Germany to become the fourth-biggest economy. Yet, 12 years on, Tokyo is still grappling with having watched China surpass it in gross domestic product terms. It was in 2010 and 2011 that banner headlines proclaimed the changing of the guard, when the economic student amassed greater power than the teacher. China, like South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and other Asian “tigers,” cribbed from parts of Japan’s development model. Why, then, is Japan’s fiercely proud political establishment making it so easy for China to continue to throttle ... (full story)