If you want to silence a room filled with Japanese politicians, suggest they should learn from China. The conventional wisdom favours the flip side of this dynamic: China should be studying Japan's playbook. Japan, after all, is an example of what China needs to do (create a vibrant domestic economy and high living standards) and what it mustn't (slide into bad-loan crises and deflation).
Yet I have one word for Japanese policy makers who dismiss the idea they should heed China's example: Shenzhen.
For two decades, economists have urged Tokyo to create a special-enterprise zone or two. The idea is to have a laboratory where officials could try drastic alternatives to Japan's rigid, bureaucratic and change-resistant model - a controlled environment in which the nationwide laws and norms that thwart economic energy could be repealed. (Sydney Morning Herald)
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