Foreign Investment Industrial Strategies

In comparison to the almost blind ‘rush’ into Asia in the late 1980s, a combination of conscious and unconscious motives has driven Japanese businesses to become increasingly selective in making their foreign direct investments (FDI) in the 1990s. What separates the flood of money that went into overseas ventures in the late 1980s from the current trends is that Japanese investors have moved away from the indiscriminate projects that at times accompanied the bubble economy to ones with a much more proven capacity to solve particular difficulties for them. We have seen how these are falling into increasingly distinct geographical and industrial patterns, each associated with some or other persistent problem within Japan, and each contributing to the development of distinct zone strategies.