THE rapid expansion of Japan's export trade cannot be dismissed as a temporary phenomenon. It is a part of a major development in the Orient that seems destined to disturb to an even greater degree than at present the economic equilibrium of the leading industrial and commercial nations. It is based upon the more effective utilization of cheap labor, Japan's principal resource for industrialization. It involves a conflict of widely contrasting standards of living. It may foreshadow important shifts in the direction of international trade.
I. ORIENTAL COMPETITION AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
To understand its full implications, Japanese competition must
Source URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/1937-07-01/oriental-competition-world-trade