Hinomaru Alliance of Industry, School and Government Appeared

Korea`s coming up in the high-tech field, China`s hot pursuit in manufacturing field...

Japanese industries, government and schools, which are surrounded all sides with enemies, are united under the name of `Hinomaru (Japanese national flag) Alliance`. Industry-government-school stand together un the national flag of Japan due to the sense of crisis that they could not survive in the global market just by the competition among enterprises. It is similar to the traditional cooperation that Japanese companies cooperated with each other when they made inroads to foreign markets, but the range of cooperation is more extended.

▽Alliance of 5 semiconductor companies = 5 companies of NEC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Toshiba are founding joint investment company in June in order to develop basic technology for next generation semiconductor. The government is supporting the alliance as the Institute of Industrial Technology under Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry spent 31.5 billion yen to purchase research facilities.

It is for the first time that Japanese representative semiconductor companies agreed to joint development. Japanese companies, having led world semiconductor industry in 1980s, were relegated by Korea and Taiwan in 1990s. As each company competed to develop individual technology, standards were different from each other and finally efficiency plunged.

This alliance is caused from the reflection on that. Newly founded companies likely to promote joint research on next generation high-tech of semiconductor minute processing, and each company will develop core IT instruments like robot, video game apparatus and car using standardized norm and technology.

▽Joint development of next generation satellite communication net = Some 20 companies and bodies like NTT Tokomo, Hitachi, Tokyo Electricity and Japan Space Development Agency established Satellite Business Research in the late January.

They will develop next generation satellite communication net that covers Asian Pacific area including Japan, China, Korea and southeastern Asian countries by launching 3 movable satellites revolving around the earth with the figure of 8. The research agency is positively promoting government-civil cooperation as it request the government for the founding of forum after completing business plan in the first half of this year.

Japan is far behind America and Europe in the communication satellite field. To take an initiative in Asia, each company is cooperating with each other spending 100 billion yen on the business. It may take 5 years to be put to practical use. When the development is completed, the satellites operate in 3 shifts sending signals evenly over Asian Pacific area with ten times less error of Global Positioning System (GPS).

▽Cooperation for developing liquid crystal = Japan was the leader in the liquid crystal field, but sense of crisis toned up as Korea relegated Japan from 2000.

Hence, liquid crystal companies like Sharp, Seico Epson, Great Japan Screen Manufacture, and Tokyo Electron are promoting the foundation of joint research company under the control of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). It is a cooperative system of industry-government-school that the government provides construction expense of 15 billion yen, and professors of Tohoku Univ. participate in the joint research.

They plan to make a counteraction on Korea by developing 30-inch liquid crystal products costing 200,000-yen level by 2005 on the basis of liquid crystal technology that Tohoku Univ. is researching. METI is promoting the measure to make only competitive top companies participate in the alliance, and to unify the administration of patent and core technology.

Young-Ee Lee yes202@donga.com