Japan and the Politics of Techno-Globalism (review)

Japan has been characterized as the paradigmatic case of "techno-nationalism."¹ Techno-nationalism is an ideology that emphasizes the importance of technology autonomy for national security. To a techno-nationalist, a nation's security depends on its overall technological capacity. Technological autonomy must be maintained at all costs. If foreign technology must be imported, a techno-nationalist state has policies to ensure that the technology is effectively removed from the control of foreigners. Foreign firms cannot be allowed to use technology to develop monopoly positions or to forestall the development of the technological capabilities of domestic firms. When alliances are needed to develop new technology, the preferred alliance partners are conationals. When it is necessary to work with foreigners, the key objective for techno-nationalists is that more technology is received than shared. A techno-nationalist country might, for example, form international research consortia in areas where its technology lags, while having no interest in consortia where it might end up teaching foreigners more than it learns.

In contrast, "techno-globalists" believe that a country benefits from free trade in technology, as it does from free trade in goods and services. Foreign firms bringing technology are encouraged to set up operations because they typically bring in high-paying jobs and other benefits. The nationality of the firms or government agencies involved in creating a technology does not much matter. Singapore and Hong Kong are characterized as following policies consistent with techno-globalism.

Not long ago the popular press in the United States and Europe put forth images of a "Japan, Inc." that, having orchestrated industrial dominance in shipbuilding, steel, automobiles, consumer electronics, and semiconductors, was moving toward dominance in high technology. Techno-nationalistic Japan was portrayed as selfishly drawing tremendous economic benefits from the science and technology developed in other countries while contributing little to the development of new knowledge. When the Japanese government announced various programs to fund international collaborative research, these programs were viewed as no more than a device by the Japanese to gain access to European and U.S. technology.

Perhaps foremost in the academic literature portraying Japan as wedded to a techno-nationalist ideology was Richard Samuels's book "Rich Nation Strong Army": National Security and Technological Transformation of Japan, published in 1994.² A lot has changed since then. Japan has endured a decade of little or no economic growth. The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 brought more pressures on the Japanese economy to globalize. And, in the midst of all this, there were various reorganizations of the Japanese bureaucracy. So, what has come of Japanese techno-nationalism?

Corning explores this issue by developing case studies of three international collaborative science programs established by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and its bureaucratic successor, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). The three programs Corning focuses on are what he says are the most controversial MITI/METI international collaborative programs: the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP), the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Initiative (IMS), and the Real World Computing Program (RWC). The HFSP is a nonprofit foundation based in France to fund molecular-level research on biological functions in living organisms. It was established in 1989 by MITI and continues to receive most of its funding from Japan. The IMS initiative is an international research program aimed at developing production systems that go beyond computer-integrated manufacturing. It was the brain-child of Japanese academics and corporate executives under the leadership of MITI and was further developed by international groups through the early 1990s. The RWC program is aimed at developing fundamental technologies in next-generation computing. It includes three European partners and one from Singapore, all of which receive funds from RWC to conduct research. The RWC program was MITI's largest electronics project during the 1990s.

Corning frames his analysis in terms of four alternative interpretations of the internationalization of Japan's research programs: (1) it results from bureaucratic turf battles...