A question that is often brought out and tortured is: Why do European and United States work four or five hours a day and pay several times as much as ours? Why do we live 996 every day, but we still live a tight life and have no sense of security at all?
On the Internet, East Asia is ridiculed as a "monster room" and "hell mode", one can be rolled up more than the other, even Japan, Korea and Taiwan Province, which are already developed economies.
Japan, once the world's second largest economy, with a per capita GDP of more than United States at the peak of the 80s, has been a developed country for decades, but the working hours far exceed those of European United States families, and young people have long been lying flat.
Korea, whose per capita GDP has exceeded 30,000 US dollars, has developed rapidly in recent years, catching up with Japan, but the fertility rate is the lowest in the world, the property market is facing a collapse, and many young people are desperately involuted, and they can only struggle at the bottom of society all their lives.
On the whole, there is a serious involution in East Asia, and people live a very depressed life.
In Europe, on the other hand, last year some companies piloted a four-day work week, and a few days ago, Germany's largest trade union, the "Metal Industry Union", began to promote the promotion of this system to the whole country.
Why is this happening? To understand the deep-seated reasons, let's analyze them from several levels. Let's take a look at how those countries that are friendly to ordinary people and do not roll up are refined.
Broadly speaking, such countries can be divided into two categories.
Resource endowment
The first category is some small countries that are "gifted".
There are many resources on the earth, but from the perspective of a country's development needs, the most important ones are: oil, natural gas, iron ore, etc. - unfortunately, these resources are generally lacking in East Asian countries.
In some small countries, God appreciates food. One or two natural resources are enough to provide a life of food and clothing for the people.
For example, Norway in Northern Europe has a population of just over 5 million, which is not as large as a prefecture-level city in China, but its oil and gas resources account for 50% of Western Europe; Australia, with a population of more than 20 million, is similar to Shanghai, but it has the richest iron ore resources in the world, and it makes a lot of money by exporting iron ore.
Australia's iron ore once accounted for two-thirds of China's imports
The same is true of those rich Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Of course, the Middle East countries are trenches, but the soil is also real soil, and it cannot be compared with Europe and the United States in terms of social development and governance, and can only be regarded as pre-modern countries.
However, for a large country with a large population, it is not enough to simply sell resources. The most typical example is Russia, which has a population of more than 100 million, Russia despite having some of the world's largest oil and gas resources, and selling oil alone cannot make it easy for its citizens to live comfortably.
Not to mention the countries of East Asia, which have large populations and lack of resources. Whether it is China, Japan or Korea, it needs to spend a lot of money every year to buy natural resources such as oil and iron ore from abroad.
From this perspective, East Asia is a talent shortage type and has natural shortcomings. However, for a country, natural resources are only one aspect, and probably the least important aspect, and the advantages of developed countries in Europe and the United States are more critical to the second point: the barriers established in the field of key technologies.
Industrial barriers
We know that Europe is the cradle of the industrial revolution and United States the place where the third scientific and technological revolution took place, while in East Asia, even if it is developed in Japan and South Korea, most of the industries are transferred from Europe and the United States, but most of the core industries that really make money are still firmly in the hands of European United States.
Since the fifties and sixties of the last century, low-end manufacturing industries such as textiles, steel, and toy manufacturing have first moved to Japan, and then to China and Southeast Asia in the eighties and nineties, and European and United States countries are also willing to use cheap labor in Asia to maintain themselves at a low inflation level through cheap goods from Asia.
In recent years, Chinese labor costs have risen, and foreign-funded companies such as Apple have begun to slowly move some production lines out of China, but they are still moving to Southeast Asian countries around China. ”
According to Confucian culture, the gentleman of Tianxingjian is constantly striving for self-improvement, and in the eyes of Westerners, he has become an East Asian who can bear hardships and stand hard work. Cook once said that in China, even at midnight, a phone call can call tens of thousands of workers to work, which is unthinkable in the United States.
But as soon as Asian countries start to enter high-tech industries, they will immediately attract repression.
For example, in Japan, since the 70s, the automobile, home appliances, semiconductors and other industries have exploded in full force, and a large number of United States companies have been destroyed by Japan, and a large number of United States workers have lost their jobs. Soon after, United States wielded the stick of the "Section 301 investigation" and launched a trade war against Japan.
In particular, Japan's semiconductor industry once beat United States companies to the point of losing their armor, and even Intel was forced to almost go bankrupt. However, in the name of national security, United States forced Japan to sign the US-Japan semiconductor agreement, which led to the stagnation of the Japan semiconductor industry, which indirectly led to the Japan being left far behind in the subsequent Internet revolution.
In 1983, United States congressmen smashed Japan radio
However, Japan has created a strong automobile industry, and auto giants such as Toyota, Honda, and Nissan are still the most important pillars supporting Japan as a developed country.
Another important pillar of Japan's economy is the electronics industry, but it has gradually declined in the past three decades, and Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic, which once sold electronic products to the world, have been shrinking their fronts over the years, closing and selling, and unable to participate in global competition.
The developed economies of East Asia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan on the mainland, are strongly dependent on the electronics industry for the rise process, but if you look closely, although East Asia produces more than 90% of the world's smartphones, laptops, electronic components, etc., the most upstream brands, standards and core technologies are still firmly in the hands of European and American companies.
The most typical example here is that Apple has grabbed 90% of the industry's profits, and suppliers such as Foxconn and Luxshare can only drink soup, and they are pinched to death by Apple, fighting each other for that low profit margin.
Another example is a laptop, a computer costs 5,000 yuan, Lenovo and Asus can only earn more than 100 yuan, and Intel can easily earn nearly 1,000 yuan with a CPU chip. As for the operating system with a marginal cost close to zero, Microsoft is even more profitable.
East Asia is more of the hard work and tiring work in the downstream of the industrial chain, and does not earn much, even TSMC, which stands at the top of chip manufacturing, started from serving United States chip companies, has little right to speak, and does not dare to grab business with customers.
The position of East Asia and Europe and the United States in the industrial chain determines the working hours and output of their respective citizens.
Here I found two data, and the comparison is very obvious. One is the number of hours worked in OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, and the other is their labor productivity, which is GDP per hour.
Working hours in OECD countries
Labor productivity in OECD countries
In terms of working hours, Korea, the "king of East Asian rolls", ranks second, Germany, France, etc. are at the bottom, and Korea's working hours are almost twice as long as Germany; But looking at labor productivity, it is the opposite, Europe and United States are among the best, while the most hard-working Koreans have become the second-to-last, and Japan is fourth-to-last, only stronger than Greece.
The gap between the high and low end of the industry is the first high wall in front of Asian countries.
In the 21st century, China began to upgrade its industry and gradually rose in the fields of communications and semiconductors. The United States soon again cracked down on Huawei and other Chinese high-tech companies in the name of national security.
The purpose is very simple: it is to nail the populous Asian countries at the low end of the industrial chain, monopolize the high-end industries themselves, and then harvest the wealth of other countries through scissors. When the United States passed the CHIPS Act some time ago, some lawmakers shouted: "Your vote will enable your children and grandchildren to have more high-paying jobs." ”
The Hand of Capital and Financial Hegemony
If industrial barriers are visible walls, then Western capital and finance are the invisible hands that penetrate the world.
In 1997, the Asian financial crisis broke out, and Korea's economy, which had been growing at a high rate, suffered a heavy blow, the scale of foreign exchange reserves shrank sharply, the government faced bankruptcy, and the entire country's life was on the line.
Korea had no choice but to seek help from international organizations such as the IMF, but the IMF and its dominant country, United States, while providing Korea with a package of aid loans, also imposed a series of very harsh additional conditions on Korea.
For example, the full opening of the financial market to foreign investors requires the Korea government to remove all caps on foreign equity and allow foreign equity to invest in the banking sector. We will further open up the foreign exchange, bond, and insurance markets, and liberalize foreign exchange transactions.
These conditions have caused great controversy in Korea, and many Koreans believe that if they are accepted, they will lose Korea's economic sovereignty and be called a loss of power and humiliation. But the bankrupt Korea government had no choice but to accept the IMF's terms.
Objectively speaking, the subsequent reform of the financial system implemented by Korea has indeed eradicated some of the deep-seated diseases of the Korea economy, but on the other hand, it has also led to Western capital taking the opportunity to rush in and buy Korea's industry at a low price.
Samsung Group's current shareholding structure
For example, Samsung, most of the equity is now in the hands of United States capital. There is a Wall Street platform behind it, which is also one of the reasons why Samsung has grown by leaps and bounds in the semiconductor field and has not been sanctioned by United States. Anyway, Koreans work hard, and in the end they also work for United States, so why not.
Korea's banks are similar, and within a few years after the financial crisis, foreign ownership of several major banks exceeded half, and Western capital predators are like an invisible hand, controlling Korea's economy.
Percentage of foreign ownership in Korea banks after the financial crisis
Looking back at the modern history of mankind, as we all know, in the early stage of the development of European and United States, they relied on the vast colonies and foreign plunder, accumulated a lot of wealth, and obtained the first pot of gold for the development of industry. Asia was also once the object of plunder, but when Asian countries started to get off the ground or were in crisis, they had to seek Western capital investment.
In this way, European and United States countries have controlled some high-end industries in Japan and South Korea in disguise through capital infiltration, so that European and American investors have made huge profits lying still.
For United States, what is even more important is that after World War II, the dollar was single-handedly established as the world currency, and the dollar is used for global food, energy and commodity transactions.
This allows the United States to easily harvest the wealth of other countries by turning on the printing press, while also making it easier for them to shift the tide of trouble in times of economic crisis. Over the years, the yen and the euro have tried to attack the hegemony of the dollar, but in the end they have all failed.
The problem of sharing the cake
Finally, let's talk about the problems of East Asian countries themselves. Let's take Korea as an example.
A few years ago, there was a vicious case in Korea that shocked the whole country: an 18-year-old college entrance examination student stabbed his mother to death because he lied to his mother that he was ranked 62nd in a national mock test before the college entrance examination, the candidate ranked around 4,000. Unexpectedly, his mother was still dissatisfied and ordered him to take the first place next time, and the conflict between the two led to a tragedy.
Korea society is quite unfriendly to the bottom strugglers, and the upward path is very narrow.
Korea's universities, the three most famous top universities, Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University, also known as SKY, are seen by Korea as a ladder to a successful life, but the acceptance rate is only 2%. Samsung, Korea's largest company, has more than 100,000 resumes submitted every year, and the acceptance rate is only 5%.
In 2018, Korea college entrance examination students called for stress reduction
Jang Ha-sung, the Korea ambassador to China, has written a book called "Korea-Style Capitalism", with the subtitle "The cry of the Korean people: Korea's economic development has nothing to do with us, who will be the beneficiary?" ”
Although Korea has become a developed country in terms of GDP per capita, the average Korean has not fully benefited. The Oscar-winning "Parasite" tells the story of this huge rift in Korea society: chaebols are having fun in mansions, and poor people two streets away, and families huddled in basements struggling to survive.
One figure is telling: Korea's top 10 chaebols contribute more than 80% of GDP but provide only 5% of employment. For ordinary people, to enter these chaebol enterprises, they must first be admitted to three top universities, so Korea college entrance examination students have to sleep four or five hours a day, either exhausting themselves or killing others.
The economic rise of East Asia, as has happened in recent decades, the economy has risen, but compared with Europe and the United States, the working class generally has little say. So the cake is bigger, but the work of dividing the cake is not done well, polarization has brought a lot of social problems, and the happiness of the whole country is not high.
The Road to Breaking Walls
Finally, to sum up.
At this point, the logic of how the world works is clear: the Europeans have laid a deep foundation by virtue of the first-mover advantage of colonial plunder and the Industrial Revolution; United States controls most of the world's high-end industries through the power of technology and capital, and can also harvest the world through dollar hegemony.
Most Asian countries with large populations can only do low-end industries with small profits and provide cheap goods for European and United States countries. Although Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have nominally entered a developed society, they still have not gotten rid of the status of "workers" in Europe and the United States, and have not achieved real industrial independence.
At present, China is also beginning to face the problem of breaking through. However, unlike Japan and South Korea, China is the first large power in Asia that has the potential to challenge the hegemony of Europe and the United States.
In terms of industry, from semiconductors and new energy vehicles to large aircraft and aerospace, China is breaking through the industrial barriers of Western countries step by step. Only by standing in the upstream of the industrial chain and obtaining a large amount of profits through high-tech industries can more people live the lives of Europeans and Americans.
In terms of finance, the internationalization of the renminbi is also steadily advancing, and recently it has been negotiating with Saudi Arabia, Brazil and other countries to use their own currencies instead of the US dollar for trade settlement.
Of course, the current United States still has an absolute advantage in the fields of science and technology and military, and these two most critical pillars support the hegemony of the dollar, so the process will be very long.
When the renminbi and the U.S. dollar can sit on an equal footing or even replace them, the pattern of the whole world will be changed, and the involution of East Asia may slowly stop.
(Source: Guo Dalu's tavern WeChat public account.) Thanks to the original author, just for knowledge sharing. ）