Japan PM Abe looks to put economy back on track with Deng-style SEZs
Prime minister's call for special economic zones as part of his 'Abenomics' reforms are seen as a throwback to Deng Xiaoping's experiments
Guess what a successful Japanese economy would look like? Probably a lot like China's.
Anti-China rhetoric helped Shinzo Abe gain power, yet the prime minister's only chance of putting the Japanese economy back on the rails depends on how well he manages to learn an art that China mastered long ago - special economic zones (SEZs).
And to do that, he might have to borrow a page from the playbook of Premier Li Keqiang, who recently managed to push through his Shanghai free-trade zone plan after fighting off internal opposition.
Abe's desperation to succeed is palpable. His Liberal Democratic Party will be tested on Sunday when half of the upper house's 242 seats come up for election. Securing a majority there will be key to pushing ahead with economic measures and a planned increase in consumption tax that holds the key to balancing the budget.
"We have been miserable in the past 20 years," said LDP leader Yasutoshi Nishimura, senior vice-president of cabinet responsible for economic and fiscal policy, at a conference with Hong Kong investors last week, underlining the government's determination to succeed. "This is the last chance for Japan's economy and this is the last chance for our party," said the man known to be playing a major part in "Abenomics", the prime minister's three-part plan to turn around the economy.
The Abe administration has already launched aggressive monetary and flexible fiscal policies, the first two "arrows" of his plan, to great effect, as rising stock prices and improving economy data seem to suggest. The real test will be the third arrow the government announced last month.