Japan harming itself to please Washington

The Japanese government has announced plans to restrict the exports of 23 kinds of semiconductor manufacturing devices to China.

Attempting to whitewash the move, Japanese officials said it was not aimed at containing China in coordination with the United States' anti-China strategy.

If the policy is implemented, it will have a big impact on Japanese companies as well. Over the past few years, Japan has been a major beneficiary of the US' attack on China's semiconductor industry.

In 2021, the value of Japan's exports of manufacturing equipment to China reached about $12 billion, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the value of equipment it exported that year. The Japanese semiconductor industry believed that it could take advantage of Sino-US trade frictions to expand equipment exports to China and consolidate its position in the global semiconductor industry chain. But that will not happen with the latest move by Tokyo.

Staying away from geopolitics is a traditional culture for Japanese companies, which were traumatized by massive US sanctions against Toshiba for selling machine tools to the Soviet Union. However, it is not ruled out that the Japanese government is secretly lobbying the US to provide some subsidies for its companies to mitigate their possible losses from the policy.

By restricting high-end semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China, the Japanese government may also be trying to force China to compromise on some hot issues concerning bilateral relations. It did so in 2019 to coerce the Republic of Korea to make concessions to restore relations by tightening export controls on three industrial parts that were crucial for the ROK's electronic industries.

Purely moral arguments won't sway Tokyo and Washington, which are adept at weaponizing technologies for political purposes. To seize the initiative firmly in its own hand, China must increase its input in research and development and strive to make breakthroughs in key technologies and basic sciences that are necessary to help the country get rid of its reliance on unreliable parties.

The future will prove that Japan has hurt its own interests by overstretching itself to meet the strategic needs of the US.