When asked to comment on China overtaking Japan to become the world's second largest economy, Nobuyuki Idei, Sony's former chairman and now head of his own Tokyo-based consultancy, was cool: 'No one should be surprised.'
Already on his sixth trip to China this year, Idei knows the country very well.
'Up to now, Japan can be seen as a mirror of whatever happens here. The Chinese will go through what the Japanese went through 20 to 30 years before them, in our learning of industry and globalisation,' he said.
'China's catch-up, especially in size and in quantity, is what Japanese businesspeople have anticipated for some time,' Idei said.
Nor should it be interpreted as an unhappy turn of events. Japan does not compete with China on size or on quantity, he said. China's course of progress would inevitably generate more opportunities for the two economies to work together.
Economists say that this year, China's GDP will probably be around US$5.3 trillion, compared with a US figure of US$14 trillion and Japan's US$5.1 trillion. Last year China recorded a GDP of US$4.9 trillion, according to IMF figures.