Germany is taking advantage of China’s continued growth, while Japan turns elsewhere, or is turned away. A concerted effort on the part of Japan to diversify investment away from China, coupled with anti-Japanese sentiment in China has meant all the more pie for Germany.
According to data from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation from last year, around 56% of Japanese firms planned to expand in ASEAN from 2016-2019, while the share of companies planning to do so in China dropped to 48%.
The JBIC survey cited growth potential of Southeast Asian markets as the paramount factor, but businesses may also have been banking on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and worried about a China slowdown, neither of which have materialized.
