Far Eastern Notebook (1988)

From the July 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Year of the rabbit

Whilst the Japanese government tried to remedy its labour shortage by a January feasibility study on opening its labour market to foreign skilled and semi-skilled workers (except of course for the construction industry), Singapore has similar problems. Since the mid-sixties the government family planning campaign on hoardings, TV and in newspapers, to "Stop at Two" has borne fruit in a lowering fertility rate. One would have thought that this would have been cause for government self-congratulation as well as a good omen for the world which, we are continually told, is overpopulating itself to the point of self-starvation. But as socialists have always held, population laws are social not “natural", and in capitalism, are geared to the requirements of capital accumulation and profitability. As the Singapore Straits Times (8.1.88) put it, "Public officials, business executives and others were previously reported to be alarmed that continued low births would eventually damage the economy, retard progress in living standards and even threaten the nation's security". Hence the recent reversal of government policy replacing financial penalties for third births and more, with population incentives, although the sudden surge in births last year was attributed to its being the Chinese Year of the Rabbit.

The reversal of the policy and of the arguments used, does not seem to have damaged the government’s credibility. Of course, by the time a generation of home-grown workers reaches an exploitable age the labour market situation could well be reversed many times, and with it the arguments. But that is the capitalists' problem. That of the workers world-wide is to realise that in every country they are conjured into, and out of. existence like an obedient genie, to satisfy capitalism's need for factory and cannon fodder, and to totally reject this obscenity.


Our friend the robot

Robots in manufacturing are no longer news. But a new generation in the building construction industry is setting fresh standards of innovation in Japan. Modularised to handle the variety of tasks and situations found on site, these are commercially marketed as viable replacements for labour used in concrete pouring, plastering and the erection of the steel skeleton of buildings. Much is made of their safety function in a country with nearly a thousand deaths a year in the building industry, but the main motive, as with much machinery introduction, is replacement of skilled labour in short supply, which translates into higher labour costs and lost contracts.

In construction, the average age of the skilled worker is now over 40, an indication of one of the biggest headaches for the Japanese capitalist — its ageing workforce. With present labour demand high, the unions see retraining as an acceptable alternative for workers replaced by the robots. As Makoto Saito, assistant manager in Kajima, a large construction company said. "[Our workers] think that the robots are developed for their benefit”.

The higher demands of flexibility, adaptability, and robustness placed upon construction robots as opposed to those used in manufacturing, have prompted the Japanese Construction Ministry in association with research institutes, to develop new design and planning systems for construction to suit the limitations of robots and not of people. When this is done in ten years or so, and the robots' role becomes more general than a mere labour shortage stopgap, Japanese construction workers may be in a better position to see who are the beneficiaries.


ASEAN’s rising sun

This region’s non-event of 1987 was the December meeting of ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) heads of government in Manila. The first for ten years, its official business took only eighteen minutes, and was mainly a demonstration of support for the Aquino government.

The role of Japan, a non-member, in the region, was highlighted by a report by the member states' Foreign Ministers. This expressed the fear that the reduction of USA involvement in the region was allowing a more prominent role for Japan militarily. In particular it points out that Japan's announcement that it is prepared to protect the sea-lanes of communication as far as one thousand miles from Tokyo, and the increase of its defence budget to beyond one per cent of its GNP has raised some concern among the ASEAN member states. Another committee stated that Japan would strive to achieve a military back-up for its dominant economic might. This mood was not dissipated even after the summit, when Japan's Prime Minister Takeshita presented ASEAN with a US$2 billion aid offer (later tied to joint Japanese participation) and, almost contritely, referred to Japan's "deplorable history of the last war” and its present rejection of the path to military power. Japan's recent warning shots at a Russian Badger bomber in its airspace, the first such incident despite many similar incursions since the war, and the knowledge that its self-defence force contains 270,000 people, 1100 tanks, 50 modern destroyers and fourteen submarines, as well as hundreds of combat aircraft could have been to blame. Perhaps ASEAN is beginning to realise that its Manila Declaration aim to produce a nuclear weapon-free zone of peace, freedom, and neutrality in its region will founder on the hard realities of its own world of national and commercial rivalries.


Profit or loss of liberty

Little has been heard of Laos since the 1975 takeover by the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party. But what we did learn from those admirers of this particular brand of state capitalism, was that it was busy building "socialism" with the aid and advice of its comrades in Vietnam. The Far Eastern Economic Review (31 December 1987) quotes Suthin, manager of a plastics factory: "Under the new policies the government won't tie our hands and our feet. We're free to run our own business, but we're expected to make a profit". If the factory loses money "and the manager doesn’t have a good reason, he'll be thrown in jail".