Japan must act quickly to change economic policies and make its industries and farmers more competitive, or China's economic strength will lead to a further decline in the importance of the world's second-largest economy, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said.
Zoellick, a frequent George W. Bush administration critic of Japan, said the country's economy has been in the "doldrums" for more than a decade, and it risks being marginalized.
"Japan's economy is in bad trouble, and it needs structural reforms," he said. "Agriculture's symptomatic of that: It's 2 percent of their GDP, it's 1.8 percent of their population, yet they pour bunches of resources into it. If they don't get a more efficient economy, the Chinese are going to eat their lunch."
Japan's economy grew 0.8 percent in the third quarter of last year, seasonally adjusted, after a second-quarter gain of 0.9 percent. That followed no gain in the first quarter of last year and three quarters of decline in 2001.
Since 1992, Japan's economy has grown on average 1.1 percent per year, about a third that of the US over the same period.
Over the same period, China's economy has grown an average of almost 8 percent per year, and its exports have increased 30-fold.
Zoellick, who was meeting yesterday for the first time with new Japanese Agriculture Minister Tadamori Oshima, said the country should make its industries more competitive.
He said the new round of global market-opening talks under way at the WTO offered a perfect opportunity for the country's officials to change the way they do things.
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