Chasing the Japanese Dream

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Changing Complexion
This influx of Chinese white-collar workers is forcing Japan to rethink its very national identity. Traditionally, the island nation has been inward-looking and xenophobic. Today, however, grappling with a labor shortage caused by decades of declining birth rates, Japan knows it must import workers if it is to remain the world's second-largest economy. And so the deluge of highly educated Chinese is challenging Japan to re-evaluate its attitude toward foreigners — particularly those who hail from what was once dismissed as a communist backwater but today is crucial to Japan's economic prospects. In 2004, trade between the two countries reached $205 billion, with China for the first time overtaking the U.S. as Japan's largest trading partner. With their bilingual skills and transnational degrees, Japan's new class of Chinese immigrants is poised to profit from this new East Asian reality. "People like us are building a bridge," says Zhang Liling, a native of the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou who has lived in Japan for 18 years and runs a television company that delivers Chinese programming to her adopted homeland. "We can develop good personal relationships so that political disagreements won't be the only thing that define the situation between Japan and China."

The first visitors from the People's Republic went to Japan in the early 1980s — but they weren't supposed to stay. China, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, had begun renewing contact with the outside world. Thousands of China's brightest scholars were dispatched to the U.S., Germany and Japan to vacuum up the latest scientific knowledge and take new ideas back home to advance the socialist cause. But the world outside proved too alluring for many students. Chen Jianjun, who arrived in the Japanese city of Kobe on a Chinese government scholarship in 1982, recalls how alien Japan's orderly society felt to a boy whose formative years were shaped by the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution. "Coming to Japan was like going to the moon," he says. "At Kobe University, the professors asked my opinions about Marx and Lenin. I had no idea that I was allowed to have an opinion on them."

The 1989 Tiananmen crackdown hardened many students' resolve to stay abroad. When the pro-democracy protests escalated in Beijing, Chen joined other expatriate Chinese students in their own demonstrations. After earning his Ph.D. in genetics, he stayed in Japan, developing biotech products for Japanese companies. But three years ago, Chen decided that he, too, should profit from China's economic boom. The possible taint of his Tiananmen activism had worn off; plenty of other former protesters were now striking it rich back home. Today, Chen helms a consulting company that helps Japanese pharmaceutical firms conduct clinical trials in China. "Without us, Japanese companies would be helpless," he says. "They don't know how business is done in China."

Chen's adopted city of Kobe has tied its future to China. Since the mid-19th century, Kobe, like the Japanese cities of Yokohama and Nagasaki, has been home to a small Chinatown, a legacy of the Chinese sailors and merchants who flocked to its once thriving port. By the early 1900s, tens of thousands of Chinese were living in Japan, often running restaurants or traditional Chinese medicine shops. But life wasn't easy. When a killer earthquake leveled Tokyo in 1923, non-Japanese residents were unfairly blamed for poisoning the water supply. Japanese mobs killed thousands of ethnic Chinese and Koreans. The aftermath of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe couldn't have been more different. Eager to revitalize a city that was struggling economically even before the massive tremor, the city government began courting Chinese investment. Today, on Kobe's refurbished Port Island, delegations of Chinese businessmen tour a vast technology park where city officials are offering tax breaks in the hopes of creating a new high-tech Chinatown. Chen's company headquarters are already here, as are dozens of other Chinese firms specializing in everything from scrap metal to biotech.

Many of these Chinese-run companies thrive by acting as cultural interpreters. With slowing sales at home, plenty of Japanese firms are looking to China's growing middle class to sustain profits. Who better than expatriate Chinese engineers to advise researchers, for instance, that Chinese like their cell phones painted gold or red? (Japanese, by contrast, prefer white or silver hues.) "With the U.S. and Japan, everyone expects there to be big differences in terms of business culture," says TV director Zhang. "But with China and Japan, even Japanese are often surprised that we don't operate the same way." To smooth the waters — even the channel between the two countries is called the East Sea by the Chinese and the Sea of Japan by the Japanese — head-hunting firm Meitec runs six-month training programs in five Chinese cities for engineers who wish to work for Japanese companies. Some later relocate to Japan. Mandatory lessons include collaborative teamwork (Chinese engineers often prefer the competitive thrill of individual research); practical engineering skills (universities in China tend to emphasize theoretical learning over actual application); and the all-important art of the apology (Japanese engineers are quick to admit fault while Chinese staff can be less contrite). Over the past 21/2 years, Meitec has brought 156 Chinese to Japan; only one has returned home. "Our engineers are not cheap Chinese labor," says Kanji Fukuda, head of Meitec's Global Business Group, who notes that Chinese receive the same salaries as their Japanese counterparts. "They are workers who are just as skilled as our Japanese engineers and actually offer added value because of their Chinese backgrounds."