Text b How Japan Boosts1 Britain

(from “U.S. News & World Report”)

Skim through the text. While noting its chief points make a list of key words, topical sentences, names, places and numbers. Then scan the text for the specific information that will help you to answer the following questions.

1 Has Japan invested a lot in the British economy?

2 How many Japanese firms set up factories and production lines as a

result of the Asian “invasion”.

4 Did Britain-based Japanese plants and factories improve Britain’s

annual balance of trade?

5 What is the most effective form of improving productivity in Britain?

6 What problems are to be settled in the process of economic cooperation

between Britain and Japan?

Nowhere has the surge of Japan’s investment struck with more force than in Britain, which received about 46 percent of the total $14.4 billion that Japan pumped into the Old World in 1990. Lured by lower labor costs, a free-market government and world-class golf courses, some 120 Japanese firms have set up shop², revitalizing Britain’s ailing export base with an injection of capital and technology. Wales alone has attracted over 30 manufacturers employing 7,000 locals - a larger influx than to any EC country - and Toyota just broke ground³ on a $236 million engine plant in Clwyd. The British, remarks France’s European Affairs Minister Edith Cresson, “are now more Japanese than the Japanese.”

That suits Britain’s ailing manufacturers just fine. Far from turning

Guidelines

Key words: to boost/ to revitalize (economy/ exports);

investment/ injection (of capital); to invest (money)/

to pump money into ...

Topical sentences: “Nowhere has the surge of Japan’s

investment struck with more force than in Britain...”

(Paragraph 1)

Names: Toyota (company) ...

Places: Wales, Clwyd ...

Numbers: $ 14.4 billion, 46%, 7,000 (local workers) ...

them into mere “screwdriver” assembly plants, the Asian “inva-sion” has pro-duced some startling turn-arounds. Television is a case in point. During the 1970s, ele-ctronics firms such as Sony and Toshiba decimated Britain’s domestic color-TV industry. A decade later, these “transplants” began exporting. By 1990 Britain had chalked up a $96 million trade surplus⁴ in TV sets. Other industries report similar successes. The trade deficit in VCR’s, for instance, shrank from $300 million in 1988 to $80 million in 1990 as Britain-based Japanese plants began shipping abroad⁵. Such transactions could improve Britain’s annual balance of trade by $21 billion by the year 2000, estimates Nomura Research Institute, a Tokyo-based think tank⁶.

Automobile transplants will make the biggest contribution. By the time Europe integrates its markets, Toyota’s $1.4 billion assembly line in Derbyshire will have commenced operations. Nissan’s $1 billion facility⁷ will be churning out⁸ 200,000 units annually, and Honda’s U.K. engine plant will have been converted to car production. All told, the British-based auto industry expects to be producing 2 million units a year by the middle of the decade - nearly double the present level.

The rivalry should prove tonic. As the “Financial Times” has noted, “Japanese competition is the most effective form of pressure on European industry to tackle overmanning and bureaucratic resistance to change.” Rover has seen productivity treble during the decade it has associated with Honda. “We have learned the Japanese way managing people and products. They have learned what makes a European car,” says a Rover spokesman.

Quality may prove Japan’s most enduring legacy. All Japanese firms in Britain have had to deal with unreliable deliveries and poorly made domestic parts, a thorny problem⁹ given though EC “local content” rules. Firms like Brother Industries have responded by training British suppliers to raise quality to the desired level. Others are setting up local research-and-development facilities to integrate production; British Steel so upgraded its metal for Nissan that it now exports the technology.

As in the U.S., there are problems with clashing cultures, profit repatriation¹⁰ and sensitivity over Japan’s dominance in many high-tech areas. But as it becomes clearer that the Japanese are looking for higher quality, not low-cost output, the gains increasingly seem worth the drawbacks.

Notes:

1 to boost (Britain’s economy)- стимулировать (... экономику)

2 to set up shop - открывать предприятия/ производство

3 to break ground - сделать первые шаги/ подготавливать

почву

4 trade surplus - активное сальдо торгового баланса

5 to ship abroad - отправлять/ поставлять (товары) за

границу

6 think tank - “мозговой центр”/ исследовательский

центр

7 facility - мощности по производству

8 to churn out (cars) - зд. выпускать (разг. “выпекать”)

9 a thorny problem - острая проблема

10 profit repatriation - зд. возвращение прибыли в страну

инвестора