Economic relations: what can we learn from trade and FDI?: Hanns Günther Hilpert and Nakagane Katsuji

Japan and China – in spite of their distinct differences – are economically the largest and most important countries of East Asia (see Table 8.1). Still the economic superpower Japan dwarfs the upcoming challenger China: by economic size Japan is four to five times as big as China; by level of income (i.e. GDP per capita) Japan outdoes China by nearly fifty times.