(Holiday in Japan...Shrine Worshippers around Tokyo...)Some Twice More and Others 100 Times More in Vain?
It is a public holiday in Japan today: Coming-of-Age Day. One of two main rare occasions for ordinary Japanese people to go and worship at a Shintoism shrine in a year, though just 10 days after holy January 1.
SECTION I: The Internet Effect
In these decades, the number of Internet users has increased at an unfaltering pace.
In 1995, only 16 million people enjoyed the Internet; today 1.7 billion people, namely 100 times more all over the world.
(Click to enlarge.)http://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm
There are two aspects this huge increase in Internet use has been involved in as a major factor: Individual Behaviors and Industrial Behaviors.
In each domain, the Internet has brought more benefits than damages in general.
First of all, the Internet has widened a chance for an individual to find a means with which to be free and exercise freedom more easily and more efficiently, satisfying individuals more.
Secondly, the Internet has widened a chance for a business to find a means with which to grow and develop its capability more easily and more efficiently, satisfying businesses more.
In this context, the largest beneficiaries of the Internet in these 15 years are China and the U.S. China could become the global economic power and the U.S. could maintain its status as a superpower through exhaustive use of the Internet.
Without this Internet power, China could not have launched its economy. The Internet has allowed China to acquire know-hows and technological knowledge and information at a pace 100 times faster than Japan struggled to get them from Europe and America after its start of modernization in the late 19th century. Chinese industries owe its success to the Internet as one of major factors.
It also gave an efficient means to the Chinese Government to control the people. The Internet allowed the Chinese Government to allow people to enjoy economic and personal freedom while restricting political and social freedom. However, democracy may prevail due to the Internet in China sooner or later.
With exploiting power of the Internet, individual Americans further expand the scope of their freedom. They have been happier to find a means to express themselves more freely over the Internet and exercise individual talent in business and other social activities by leveraging the telecommunications and multi-media technologies.
Specifically, the American finance sector has multiplied their transactions and business scopes supported by reliable and fast computing systems. It has enabled the handling of astronomical sums of money and combinations of trading and margins/interest as well as management of millions of portfolios. However, desire-driven use of the Internet in the U.S. financial sector may result in a great debacle at any time like in the case of September 2008.
Indeed, the most outstanding changes since 1995 to today are the economic rise of China buying U.S. Treasury bonds and notes more than Japan, and the U.S.-triggered global financial crisis and recession, resulting in the 10% unemployment rate in the U.S. and the 5% unemployment in Japan.
Nonetheless, as long as the Internet never ceases to expand, another China or another America might emerge, riding on the Internet effect.
Anyway, when you observe or analyze China and the U.S., you have to always check how the Internet effect is working in this G2, though not a so honorable group.
It is so since the Internet is yet to introduce true democracy into China and true discipline in the U.S. financial sector.
SECTION II: Asia over the U.S. and the E.U. in Value-Added Revenue
In terms of the world share of production and sale of value-added goods of high-technology application, Asia (including Japan, Korea, China, and India) has secured its leading position even after 2001.
The amount of real business in this sector has more than doubled since 1995. Indeed, development of Internet-related technologies promise future or ever sustained growth in at least one sector of industries: value-added manufacturing of high-technology application. Truly the Windows 95 OS and its successors have enabled 100 times more users in the virtual sphere to leverage the Internet since 1995.
(Click to enlarge.)http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/c6/c6s2.htm#c6s24
Yet, as a single nation, the U.S. is still the largest and the most advanced nation, the weight in Asia has been all the more intensified.
From the above graph, it is apparent that the U.S. might surpass Japan but cannot Asia including Japan.
The implication is significant even in politics.
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President Mr. Barack Obama reportedly said that he would not send troops to Yemen and Somalia.
So, I think that no American troops will be sent to Yemen and Somalia until 2012.
Yet, there is a significant concern about future U.S. invasion of, or involvement in, armed conflicts or a civil war in Yemen and/or Somalia, specifically after 2012.
It is also symbolic that the executant of the Xmas-Eve airliner terror attempted had visited Dubai before taking his fatal course to the terrorism.
You had better refer to EEE-History as posted in EEE Reporter on October 3, 2008.
http://eereporter.blogspot.com/2008/10/eee-history.html
Heb 1:10 And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:
Heb 1:11 They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment;
Heb 1:12 And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.