Do you know the consequences of doing something like this? Just look at Toshiba.
The former Toshiba was not only a technology giant that developed the world's first color TV, telephone and notebook computer, but also had hundreds of thousands of employees and its business spanned home appliances, computers and semiconductors. Its status in Japan was equivalent to that of Samsung in South Korea. The same business oligarch, but such a giant was uprooted by the United States just because he did one thing wrong. Not only did his business be split up and sold off, but the entire Japanese electronics manufacturing and semiconductor industry seemed to be suffering. The crime of consecutive seats.
Look back, twenty or thirty years ago, from mobile phones to TVs, microwave ovens, and elevators, how many Japanese brands were there in our lives, but what about now? So what did Toshiba do to bring such a disaster to itself and even the country? For all this, we have to start with how Toshiba became so powerful.
The founders of Toshiba are all well-known local inventors, but the real reason for the rise of this brand is that the United States gave all its technology and orders to Japan around the 1950s. It is said that he is contributing his efforts and throwing money away, but what do you think he is after?
Because World War II had just ended at that time, Laos and the United States were in urgent need of an intelligence center to restrain the two major countries in the Far East. Then it took a look, hey, this Xiaori's geographical location in the Asia-Pacific region is very suitable, so it actively helped him recover from his post-war injuries. Not only did he lose nearly 4 billion U.S. dollars of his military orders, but he also actively transferred various Advanced electronic manufacturing technology.
Since the elder brother is so powerful, the younger brother cannot hold back, so Xiaori has also introduced an introduction subsidy system. For example, as long as enterprises introduce foreign advanced technology, half the value of the imported equipment will be subsidized, which is equivalent to half price. .
So in the next twenty years, Hitachi introduced almost half a century of advanced technologies invented around the world, and a number of Japanese companies rose up. Hitachi's 64K DRAM chip, with a market share of 40 The rate became the first in the world, and NEC also dominated the 256K chip. For a long time, Toshiba, which has been specializing in invention and manufacturing and is also one of the five major military industrial companies, is not only engaged in semiconductors, but also in nuclear energy and home appliances. , computers, where high-tech is done. But as the saying goes, there are no permanent friends, only permanent interests. Even if the United States is the brother who helped it rise to 90,000 miles, Toshiba can give up this friendship at any time in order to make money.
As we said before, the story took place in the 1950s. At that time, in addition to the end of World War II, there was another major event, which was the 44-year-long conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, which was fought only through armaments. The Cold War is a war with economic competition, so it is a war without gunpowder, but nuclear weapons must be arranged. After all, the United States only showed "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" two years ago. If he has it and you don't have it, how can we guarantee it? It came right in front of me.
What does it mean? Xiaori's products have increased tariffs, which means that if his chips want to recoup their costs, they have to sell them more expensively. In this way, compared with other competing products, they lose their cost performance, and at the same time, Xiaori is forced to buy them. Products of foreign companies. This is not over yet. In April of the following year, the United States imposed a further 100 tariff on Xiaoni's computers and other products for unfounded reasons, and required Japanese companies such as Fujitsu and Mitsubishi to disclose more than a thousand patents of the very large scale integrated circuit project. .
Will he hand it over if he says so? I won’t hand it over, what will happen to it? Look at what happened to Toshiba. After the Toshiba incident, the United States, led by members of Congress, took the lead in boycotting Toshiba products and passed a trade bill banning Toshiba’s exports to the United States within five years. We also mentioned at the beginning However, the reason why Toshiba has been able to soar is, on the one hand, policy support and rapid technological iteration, and on the other hand, it benefits from military orders from the United States. But now, in terms of military purchases, the old U.S. military has canceled its agreement to purchase missile technology from Toshiba. Not only that, in the 1980s, computers were almost all government procurement. Therefore, Toshiba also directly lost the 15 billion yen computer contract originally planned by the US Department of Defense, and there were no Toshiba bids in subsequent bids. Figure, if you can't get the most core market orders, it means that you are derailed from the market demand. Just like making clothes, you need to keep up with the trend. If you don't know what is popular now, how can the clothes you make sell well? For example, in the two years from 1985 to 1987, the Nikkei Index nearly doubled, while Toshiba Machinery only increased by less than 3%. Although Toshiba invested a lot of money during this period, Billion Yen published his apology ads in various media outlets across the United States, asking for forgiveness, but he could not escape this already arranged fate.
Suffering from procurement blockades and tariff penalties from Laos and the United States, Xiaoni’s semiconductor industry has gradually moved away from the Lao-US market. The rise of TSMC and Samsung has given Lao-US chip companies a low-cost R&D and production environment. The Kodori semiconductor industry, which was out of touch with the trend of technological development, suddenly dropped from a global market share of 49 to 7. From then on, there were no Japanese companies in the forefront of the semiconductor industry. After that, Toshiba seemed to be in decline. Overall, the semiconductor industry was in trouble. I wanted to transform into nuclear power construction, so I finally bought Westinghouse 77's shares at three times the bidding price. Then the Fukushima Earthquake immediately hit me, causing nuclear waste from the nuclear power plant to begin to overflow. All countries Beginning to re-evaluate the construction of nuclear power plants, Toshiba's nuclear power department not only did not receive a new order, but even previous orders were cancelled. What's even worse is that Westinghouse spent US$229 million to buy a US nuclear power engineering service provider at the end of 2015. However, the nuclear power business collapsed, resulting in rising construction costs and labor costs, which indirectly led to the loss of 40 A debt of US$200 million fell on the majority shareholder Toshiba, and this may have been the last straw for him. In April of the same year, Toshiba admitted that it had injected nearly 160 billion yen into corporate profits in the past seven years. After the incident, the stock price plummeted, and the market value shrank by nearly 40%. The next year, it hit a record of 88. 100 million US dollars, the largest full-year loss in the history of Japan's manufacturing industry. In order to fill the financial hole, he had to cut off his arms to survive. Toshiba, the former light of Japan, sold off its best business one by one, including the elevator business. Kone, the home appliance business was sold to Midea, the medical systems company was sold to Canon, Westinghouse Electric, which had suffered a lot, filed for bankruptcy, and used all the shares in the semiconductor department to make up for the loss and sold it to the old American Bain Capital.
As the saying goes, eat people softly and take advantage of others with short hands. The higher you climb by relying on other people’s countries, the harder you will fall when the ladder is withdrawn, so sometimes think about this old American prohibition Huawei's purchase of chips may be a good thing. As Bill Gates said, the chip ban not only caused them to lose a large number of jobs, but more importantly, the ban will only make China invest more in the chip field. It will only promote China's self-sufficiency. Although this road seems to be far away at present, and we all know that it is destined to be full of thorns, but to be honest, I have always firmly believed in the arrival of China Core!