Trans-Pacific View | Society | East Asia

What the 1980s ‘Japan Panic’ Tells Us About Today’s ‘China Threat’

It’s almost eerie how easily contemporary China discourse parallels U.S. rhetoric about Japan in the 1980s – especially given the huge differences between the two countries.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan reviewing troops with Prime Minister Nakasone at an arrival Ceremony at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, Japan, May 4, 1980.

[U]nhappily, we must take responsibility for our own failures. The Chinese have developed a nation of producers; we are a nation of consumers. China is a nation of engineers, the United States a nation of lawyers. The Chinese willingly sacrifice today for tomorrow; we sacrifice tomorrow for today. There are disturbing signs that the Chinese have deliberately engaged in the economic conquest of America. I cannot prove this, it cannot be documented. I can only cite scraps of evidence- a whispered word here, a secret CIA account there, knowing looks on the faces of Chinese leaders who I have questioned.  Every economic move China has made […] has been carefully controlled, directed and orchestrated by the government. How should we respond? It seems to me that we must mobilize our economic forces again. We must restructure our industrial and technological apparatus.

[U]nhappily, we must take responsibility for our own failures. The Chinese have developed a nation of producers; we are a nation of consumers. China is a nation of engineers, the United States a nation of lawyers. The Chinese willingly sacrifice today for tomorrow; we sacrifice tomorrow for today.

There are disturbing signs that the Chinese have deliberately engaged in the economic conquest of America. I cannot prove this, it cannot be documented. I can only cite scraps of evidence- a whispered word here, a secret CIA account there, knowing looks on the faces of Chinese leaders who I have questioned. 

Every economic move China has made […] has been carefully controlled, directed and orchestrated by the government. How should we respond? It seems to me that we must mobilize our economic forces again. We must restructure our industrial and technological apparatus.

The passage above was written almost 40 years ago. Naturally, it was not originally about China. It comes from Jack Anderson’s 1988 warning about Japan’s rise, with only the proper nouns changed.

It’s almost eerie how easily 1980s Japan panic language tracks contemporary China discourse. Market competition is portrayed as concealing state-directed conquest. The rising Asian industrial power is described as technically brilliant, strategically patient, and nationally disciplined. Its competence is felt as American decline. 

For Americans who don’t remember the 1980s, it may be jarring even hearing post-war Japan described with such hostility. Japan today is usually imagined less as an economic predator than as an aging ally and cultural export powerhouse. 

But Anderson’s article was hardly an outlier. Across the political spectrum, Japan was regularly portrayed not simply as a competitor, but as an economic conqueror. Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale warned that American children might be left to “sweep up around Japanese computers” if the country did not force Japan to open its markets. Alarms were raised about trade deficits and direct investment in the United States. 

In another complaint that could be dropped almost unchanged into today’s China discourse, a 1985 New York Times article, “The Danger From Japan,” quoted the head of Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment on Japan’s technical advantage at America’s expense: 

They are ahead of us in productivity in automobiles, in steel, in robotics. We are ahead in fundamental research, but they get all our science papers and research, and they add to that their mastery of ‘process technology,’ translating fundamental research into the making of things. They recruit their managers from the factory floor; we get ours out of law schools.

They are ahead of us in productivity in automobiles, in steel, in robotics. We are ahead in fundamental research, but they get all our science papers and research, and they add to that their mastery of ‘process technology,’ translating fundamental research into the making of things. They recruit their managers from the factory floor; we get ours out of law schools.

The discourse was framed as........

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