Japanese are Eating Chinese Forests (part 2)
China exports more to Japan than anywhere else in the world. And China is Japan’s third largest market.
Japan’s trade with China grew for the seventh straight year - nearly 13% last year.
But…..they don’t like each other.Still they do business.
Until now, China wants to start charging more for the chopsticks it exports, perhaps putting an end to this relationship. And the tree huggers are, well, hugging one another.
Japan for its part has decided to start shopping elsewhere for chopstick makers and when possible, switch to plastic chopsticks. The plastic version are usable for about 100 times longer than the wooden waribashi (making the price about the same) but when the plastic ones are thrown away they last a couple of thousand times longer! Yo, treehuggers, did you hug that?
Japan and China have enough troubles - some quite legitimate - who owns the undersea gas fields in the South China Sea and visits of Japanese PMs to shrines where war criminals are buried….and now, um…chopsticks.
Can someone tell me how many pairs of chopsticks you can get from one tree? I tried to figure this out but came up confused. Then, I tried looking it up, and it seems everyone else who tried to figure it out got confused, also.
I believe in responsible use of the earth’s resources. I also think the livelihood of quite a few people in China is going to be affected needlessly.
Isn’t there another way to work out this chopstick thing?
What do you think?
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POSTED IN: China Business, Japan business
2 opinions for Japanese are Eating Chinese Forests (part 2)
joyce
May 31, 2006 at 2:38 am
yes china and japan have many historical problems,but we still believe that people are born good.we just need more talk.and it’s true that the quality of japanese products is better than chinese ones’.we admire staff that are excellent.chinese are realists ,so the industry should work harder.it’s not a matter of patriotic or relationship.
panasianbiz
May 31, 2006 at 8:35 am
Joyce,
I really appreciate your thoughts here.
My kids are Japanese (me ex is Japanese). My boys are NOT responsible for the history between China and Japan. Yes, Japan was terrible - even horrible.
But, still we must get along.
Thank yuo for sharing a mature position.
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