The resurgence of Japan's semiconductor industry is like a trapped beast, and the last chance of revival is also slim.

Japan's battle to revive its semiconductor industry is a battle it cannot afford to lose, but it is also destined to be a desperate fight with little hope.

As the wave of new energy vehicles sweeps the world, Japan's proud automobile industry has to face the challenge of transformation. Although Japan started the research and development of new energy vehicles very early, it made the wrong bet on hydrogen energy vehicles. Therefore, when pure electric vehicles became popular in the market, Japan's automobile giants also fell into the passive situation of being unable to turn around.

Every time the market share of pure electric vehicles increases, the survival space of Japanese automobile companies decreases.

Over time, these changes have gradually manifested themselves in Japan's economic data. Its automobile exports have fallen from 4.83 million in 2010 to 3.82 million in 2021. At the same time, Japan's GDP has also fallen from $5.47 trillion in 2010 to $4.93 trillion in 2021.

As the market share is being eroded by new energy vehicles, the Japanese government is looking for new support points for its economic growth while promoting transformation.

Last year, Japan released a semiconductor industry growth strategy report, hoping to elevate the semiconductor industry to a more important position and make it another new engine of Japan's economic growth after automobiles.

Looking at the history of the past three decades, Japan's bet on the semiconductor industry is not only to find a new engine for its own economy, but also to try to revive this industry that once represented the pinnacle of Japanese manufacturing.

In fact, Japan's semiconductor industry had achieved brilliant success in the 20th century. As early as 1986, its semiconductor products accounted for 45% of the global market share. However, with the signing of the Japan-US "Plaza Accord", Japan's semiconductor industry was also suppressed by the US government. As a result, Japan's once prosperous economy was also hit hard and fell into a downturn. By 1995, Japan's semiconductor product share in the world had dropped to 35%, and Japan's economic giant also sailed into the fog.

As Japanese semiconductor companies retreated from the global market, companies from the United States, South Korea, and Taiwan began to gradually become the protagonists. By 2021, Japan's share of the global semiconductor market was only 6%, while the United States and South Korea had market shares of 54% and 22% respectively during the same period.

So, how can Japan, which has only a 6% market share, build the semiconductor industry into a new economic engine for the country?

In order to promote the development of the semiconductor industry in Japan, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that the government will provide a huge investment of more than 1.4 trillion yen for the development of the semiconductor industry to attract TSMC to build a factory in Japan. The overall vision is to achieve the goal of tripling the revenue of semiconductor companies to 13 trillion yen by 2030.

Through a series of actions taken by the Japanese government, it is not difficult to find that Japan has made up its mind to revive the semiconductor industry. However, the semiconductor industry is not something that can be achieved by just throwing money at it, and the same is true for Japan.

The 2021 Global Semiconductor Industry Research Report points out that the global semiconductor industry chain is divided into three parts: supporting industries, manufacturing industry chains, and application fields. Among them, the supporting industry is composed of manufacturing materials, packaging materials, manufacturing equipment, and packaging equipment companies; the manufacturing industry chain includes three major links: IC design, IC manufacturing, and IC packaging and testing; the application fields cover multiple fields such as consumer electronics, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things.

As for Japan, although its share in the semiconductor market is not high, it still maintains a leading position in semiconductor equipment and raw materials. Japanese companies account for 35% of the global semiconductor equipment market and 52% of the global semiconductor raw materials market. In 2019, it launched export controls on semiconductor raw materials to South Korea, which was a flex of its muscles in the semiconductor industry chain.

However, other links in the semiconductor industry chain are still divided among many countries around the world. For example, China provides important raw materials such as rare earths, ASML of the Netherlands provides lithography machines, TSMC and other companies manufacture chips, and ASE and other companies complete packaging and testing.

It is true that Japan can use its huge advantages in semiconductor raw materials and equipment to attract companies scattered around the world to build factories in Japan, but Japan's semiconductor industry still has to accept the current situation of global division of labor. If Japan aims to create a monopoly market like in the last century, it will inevitably be opposed by global semiconductor companies.

At the same time, Japan also needs to consider the labor force problem of developing the semiconductor industry. As the country with the most serious aging population in Asia, the proportion of elderly people over 65 years old in Japan in 2021 is as high as 28.9%. At the same time, Japan is also facing the problem of negative population growth. In 2021, the working population aged 15 to 64 in Japan decreased again by 584,000.

In response to the above problems, Japan has no choice but to increase the retirement age to supplement human resources. Japan's pension collection regulations stipulate that from the age of 65, for every month a retired employee delays receiving his pension, his pension amount will increase by 0.7%; if a retired employee receives a pension from the age of 75, the monthly pension will increase by 84% compared to the pension received from the age of 65. Based on such a pension policy, office workers over 70 are also common in Japan.

In order to cope with the labor shortage caused by negative population growth, Japan has also relaxed visa restrictions and foreign worker restrictions. From 2014 to 2018, the total number of foreign workers in Japan has reached 1.084 million.

The semiconductor industry is a highly globalized industry with division of labor, but the relationship between enterprises is still affected by the law of the jungle. The United States forced Japan to sign the "Plaza Accord" first, and Japan used its monopoly position to sanction South Korea later. Although the events occurred at different times, the causes of the conflict were the same. Just as the market lost by Japanese auto companies was occupied by latecomers, every 1% adjustment in the chip market share will also trigger conflicts.

In other words, if Japan wants to revive its domestic semiconductor industry, it means that some interests of other countries in the industrial chain will be damaged. A question arises: will the United States, which occupies an absolute dominant position in the industrial chain, agree to this?

From the perspective of national development, Japan is right to be determined to revive the semiconductor industry, but the "lost thirty years" have caused too much harm to Japan. Japan, which once dominated the semiconductor market, wasted its golden time for development. Now it is catching up. In addition to being dragged down by an aging population, Japan also has to face the covetous eyes of its competitors. Although Japan cannot lose this battle of semiconductor revival, it seems that it cannot win a complete victory. As the last chance for Japan's economic revival, the semiconductor industry seems to be no longer suitable for Japan's national conditions.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.