IN 1977, FIVE years after China and Japan re-established diplomatic relations, Mi-yakoshi, an electronics manufacturer, became the first Japanese firm to receive a business permit from the Communist Party, to make cassette-tape recorders. In 2017 around 32,000 Japanese companies had investments worth $117bn on the mainland, one of the biggest foreign corporate footprints. Last year they poured close to $11bn into China, up by half since 2010 and not far off America's long-stagnating tally. Big listed Japanese firms derived 17% of their overseas profits from China, according to calculations by Jesper Koll, a fund manager in Tokyo.
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