Understand the corporate culture of Japanese trading companies

Many people in China know well-known Japanese companies such as Toyota, Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, Sanyo and NEC, but they don't know what is behind them. Big brother? It is a Japanese comprehensive trading company. These enterprises are only affiliated enterprises or members of the consortium of trading companies.

In fact, a comprehensive trading company like Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and its consortium system are the pillars of the Japanese economy.

Mitsui & Co., Ltd. is the largest comprehensive trading company in the world. 1993, mitsui products ranked first among the top 500 in the world. After 2003, Mitsui & Co., Ltd. independently accounted for the energy sector and other important industrial institutions, and set up independent corporate companies around the world, which made its position in the top 500 ranking decline rapidly, and its real strength and activities were hidden from the attention of the outside world. Mitsui & Co., Ltd., as the mother of Mitsui consortium, has cultivated many world-class enterprises, and there are many Fortune 500 enterprises in Mitsui consortium system.

What exactly does Mitsui Products do? This seems to be a global mystery.

In recent years, Japanese consortia represented by Mitsui & Co., Ltd. have been more and more deeply involved in China affairs through various channels, which has brought a series of complicated influences. Some large Chinese-funded enterprises have become the springboard for these consortia. Stepping stone? .

Bai Yimin, a China native who worked in the Mitsui Consortium in Japan for 12 years, published a financial book "Mitsui Empire in Action" last year, exposing the secrets of Japanese comprehensive trading companies and consortia. He is from China Academy of Social Sciences? National Japan Economic Association? Director, it's shaped? Consortium Economic Research Office? Committed to promoting the establishment of comprehensive trading companies and consortia in China.

It is time to learn from Japan! ? Bai Yimin said in an exclusive interview with this newspaper. In 2006, he founded? Super website? Web site, the first to put forward the concept of oriental economics, and that China's Confucian culture and Taoist culture are not suitable for the American model.

He said that the textbooks used by the Economics Department of China University are almost all written by American economists, and Japanese entrepreneurs are also keen on American MBA, ignoring Japanese and Korean enterprises known as comprehensive trading companies. In fact, Japanese consortia pay attention to teamwork, share the crisis and form a community of destiny. These models have inherited more Confucian and Taoist cultures in China.

Bai Yimin believes that in the future, comprehensive trading companies and consortia in China will be born. He saw the potential of comprehensive trading companies from China enterprises such as CITIC Group and China Merchants China.

Reporter: What are the main characteristics of the Japanese comprehensive trading company?

Bai Yimin: For example, Mitsui & Co., Ltd. has two key functions: one is to promote international trade through various well-designed services; Second, the global mobilization of information, manpower, financial resources and other resources for industrial investment.

First of all, relying on the existing enterprises of the consortium, investing in the upstream and downstream peripheral enterprises of its industrial chain, with the purpose of opening up the industrial chain, maintaining long-term cooperative relations with production enterprises and obtaining the trade agency right of products. This has a lot to do with the positioning of trading companies as industrial organizers.

Secondly, to be an industrial integrator, whether Mitsui & Co., Ltd. invests in a project mainly considers not the pursuit of profit first, but the pursuit of long-term industrial development space.

Finally, invest in the enterprises affiliated to the consortium, but Mitsui & Co., Ltd. itself is not a major shareholder. Mitsui & Co., Ltd. generally holds 5% ~ 10% of the shares of the invested enterprise, and Mitsui & Co., Ltd. does not directly carry out production activities. As a form of business organization, the comprehensive trading company has several basic characteristics: it deals with the comprehensiveness of goods and its business scope involves many industries; Economies of scale, establishing an independent logistics system and developing economies of scale; The extensiveness of trade activities, including import trade, domestic trade and entrepot trade; Global scope of activities; There are many functions, including information function, resource development function, trade function, financial function, coordination organization function and service function.

Reporter: Why is there a consortium with a comprehensive trading company as the core in Japan?

Bai Yimin: From the standpoint of Japanese enterprises, Japan is an island country with small land area, poor resources and frequent natural disasters, which has formed a natural sense of crisis among the Japanese people. Joining the consortium with the trading company as the core is conducive to complementary advantages, and enterprises within the consortium can support each other in operation. Especially in the face of economic crisis, group survival is conducive to enterprises to retain talents and technology, wait for macroeconomic recovery, give play to scale advantages, quickly seize business opportunities, and maximize the interests of the group.

Obviously, the Japanese consortium is a form of business organization that is both profitable and prosperous, which has a lot to do with the influence of the idea of common prosperity in Japanese culture. In addition, Japan has a tradition of rejuvenating the country through commerce since ancient times. Especially after World War II, building a country through trade even became a national policy of Japan, and excellent businessmen were praised in Japan? Business soul? 、? National treasure? . In the long run, trading companies and their affiliated enterprises have become the cornerstone of Japan's economy.

Reporter: According to your research, the Japanese trading company model actually originated from Zhejiang merchants and Huizhou merchants in ancient China, so why didn't China produce comprehensive trading companies and consortia?

Bai Yimin: First of all, comprehensive trading companies must live in the environment of market economy, while China has only been engaged in market economy for 30 years, and the real market economy has only been more than ten years. Therefore, the market economy environment in China has not provided enough living soil for trading companies. Although China has a monopoly state-owned enterprise, it is also a big trading company on the surface, but it is still very different from trading companies, and many behaviors are divorced from the market. Secondly, our country has no such consciousness to cultivate comprehensive trading companies. Japan's comprehensive trading company has the will of the country in it. Did it happen during the Meiji Restoration in Japan? Black ship incident? Four American warships sailed into Edo Bay, Japan, threatening to end the Japanese shogunate by force? Closed to the outside world? Policy. Since then, stimulated Japan has insisted on establishing an independent economic system and confronting the West. At this time, trading companies like Mitsui developed. Mitsui had actually been engaged in commercial activities for more than 200 years before the Meiji Restoration, and established his own financial system, his own bank and commercial network in Japan. During the Meiji Restoration, Mitsui partially inherited its own business system for hundreds of years and transformed the traditional business model from China.

Reporter: China enterprises such as Fuxing System and China Resources Department have the potential of comprehensive trading companies?

Bai Yimin: China Merchants Group and CITIC Group are the only enterprise groups in China with the rudiment of consortium. From banks to securities, from resources to energy, from IT to aviation, CITIC has almost everything. In 2009, CITIC ranked 29th among the top 500 Chinese enterprises with an operating income of 654.38+054.5 billion yuan. Citic operates these seemingly unrelated industries, but gradually forms a joint force through industry integration. It seems that being an industrial organizer is the ultimate goal of CITIC. Financial services accounted for 47.93% of CITIC Group (2008). Citic Group, relying on its strong financial strength, actively carries out industrial integration and strives to build a China consortium.

Thirty years ago, China Merchants Group built Shekou Industrial Zone, the first economic development zone open to the outside world in New China, with a forward-looking strategic vision, which set a number of national and world-first surprises? Shekou mode? . Today, in the whole business field, circulation is like a skeleton, and finance is like blood. We can clearly see that it is through the construction of China Merchants Group? Skull? And provide? Blood? Hold the lifeblood of China's business. At present, China Merchants Group is a well-deserved leader in the fields of shipping, logistics, transportation and transportation infrastructure in China. Based on China Merchants Bank, China Merchants Group gradually extended its industrial chain in the financial field, and developed into securities, insurance and insurance brokerage, funds and fund management, and initially formed a financial group with diversified financial industries, China Merchants Bank's own characteristics, complete categories and distinct levels.