西充县旅游协会 会长:Japan's resiliency: Make the best of a bad bargain[][

来源：百度文库 编辑：九乡新闻网 时间：2024/04/27 20:50:29

Japan's resiliency: Make the best of a bad bargain






‘Light at end of tunnel’


Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he can see "light at the end of the tunnel" as workers at the troubled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant reconnected power to two of the failed reactors.

Lighting has been restored in the control room of one of the most badly-damaged reactors at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. It is hoped the development will speed up work to restore cooling systems vital for stabilising the reactor.


As the battle to prevent a meltdown enters its 11th day, Kan's signs of optimism are the strongest from a Japanese official amid the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.


"While we haven't reached the point where we can say we've gotten out of this crisis situation, it can be said that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel," Kan said at the beginning of a meeting of his crisis response team at the prime minister's office in Tokyo.


Tokyo station.jpg (63.63 KB)
2011-3-23 09:06

'Make the best of a bad bargain'

A sombre pall hangs over Tokyo. People are nervous about radiation, nervous about the next aftershock, and not a little nervous about whether the trains will be running to take them to their homes in Tokyo’s distant suburbs. Yet, amid the strangeness, Tokyo remains reassuringly familiar. The taxi drivers still bow. The interior of their cabs are still decorated in white lace. Japanese toilet seats are still heated (some little luxuries you can’t do without) and shopkeepers still run to serve their customers. On the day of the earthquake, hundreds of thousands slept in their offices, millions more marched the many miles home like a procession of ants. From Monday, many have struggled back into work despite the limited train service. Though some shelves have been cleared of toilet paper, batteries and tofu – preparations for power cuts or the next big quake – in others people limit themselves to one loaf of bread and one pint of milk each.


For anyone who knows Japan, who has seen its workers on the factory floor or its craftsmen at their meticulous business, these are heartening stories. Japan is a country with few natural resources beyond its people. These are the people who created the Japanese miracle and who maintained another kind of Japanese miracle even when the world had grown bored and disillusioned with its stagnant economy.


As a Japanese phrase goes Wazawai wo tenjite fuku to nasu, (in English it is prosaically rendered: “Make the best of a bad bargain.”), the Japanese miracle is not over and the resiliency of the country is expected to show again.



‘Bet on Japan’s ability to rebound’

The Japanese economy has been staggered by an earthquake, a tsunami and a nuclear crisis. But history suggests it will bounce back with no lasting damage.


Wealthier countries with stable government institutions are especially suited to benefit from reconstruction after a natural disaster. So are countries with vast international trade and those that can easily raise money.


Researchers have documented that natural disasters, for all the death and destruction they leave, cause surprisingly little lasting economic damage.


A report last year by the Inter-American Development Bank found that natural disasters tend to cause long-term economic damage only when they trigger political upheaval. Iran and Nicaragua, for instance, were crippled economically by 1979 revolutions that followed killer earthquakes.


Otherwise, economies usually respond with long-term resilience after natural calamities.


Chinese government researchers have calculated that the Sichuan earthquake and the massive reconstruction effort that followed added to China's sizzling 9.6 percent growth in 2008.


And consider the deadly earthquake that hit Kobe, Japan, in January 1995. Experts predicted the area would need a decade to recover. Instead, Kobe's manufacturers were producing at 98 percent of pre-quake levels within a year and three months, according to a study by the late Purdue University economist George Horwich. About four in five retail shops, including all department stores, were open in a year and a half.


Even with the devastation in Kobe, Japan's economic growth more than doubled from 1994 to 1995.


Similarly, Hurricane Katrina devastated coastal Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005 but "didn't puncture investment or growth in the rest of the country," says Robert Shapiro, a former Commerce Department official and chairman of the economic consulting firm Sonecon.


And the reconstructions that followed the 1989 Northern California quake and the 1994 Southern California quake are widely believed to have helped the California economy.


Countries without deep financial reserves, trade relationships or skilled work forces are much less likely to benefit from rebuilding programs. Impoverished Haiti, for instance, lacked the resources to handle the aftermath of a deadly quake last year — even with help pouring in from overseas.


Japan, by contrast, has the institutions to handle a massive reconstruction effort, says Mark Skidmore, a Michigan State University economist. "They have high human capital," he says. "They have pretty darn good institutions."


And "if you've got trade, you've got ports and other distribution resources" that speed delivery of relief supplies and construction material to disaster zones.


Even in the developing world, the economic damage is typically short-lived. A poor country's economy typically shrinks in the first year after a calamity, then bounces back as investments pour in and money moves around, Mechler says.


Sonecon's Shapiro raises the concern that Japan won't prove as resilient this time as it was after the Kobe quake in '95. This month's quake damaged power plants, leaving communities with crippling electricity shortages. Shapiro says the threat of radiation leaks from a nuclear power plant damaged in the quake also could paralyze the economy. And the Tokyo government is deep in debt. Some question whether it could finance a rebuilding effort that is expected to cost more than $200 billion.


Others point out that the Japanese government can raise money by selling bonds to the Japanese public, which has a high savings rate. The United States, by contrast, relies heavily on foreign governments and investors to finance massive government deficits.


In its report Monday, the World Bank estimated that Japan's disaster would reduce the country's growth by up to 0.5 percentage points this year. But it also says the slowdown won't last much beyond mid-year. (Bloomberg/FT/AP)

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