The American blockade turned into a joke.

Do you know the consequences of doing such a thing? Just look at Toshiba.

Toshiba used to be not only a technology giant who developed the world's first color TV, telephone and notebook computer, but also a business oligarch with hundreds of thousands of employees. Its business covers household appliances, computers and semiconductors, and its position in Japan is equivalent to that of Samsung in South Korea. But such a big MAC was uprooted by America just because it did something wrong, which not only led to its own business being split and sold, but also the entire electronics manufacturing and semiconductor industries in Japan seemed to suffer from row after row.

Looking back twenty or thirty years ago, there were many Japanese brands in our lives, from mobile phones to televisions, microwave ovens and elevators, but now? So what did Toshiba do to bring such a disaster to itself and even the country? All this has to start with how Toshiba is so strong.

Several founders of Toshiba are well-known local inventors, but the real reason for the rise of this brand is that his old beauty gave his technology and orders to Japan around the 1950s, which can be said to be both a contribution and a waste of money, but what do you think he wants?

Because shortly after the end of World War II, the United States urgently needed an intelligence center to restrict the two great powers in the Far East. At first glance, Japan's geographical position in the Asia-Pacific region is very suitable, so it actively helped him recover from the post-war damage, not only lost nearly $4 billion in military orders, but also actively transferred various advanced electronic manufacturing technologies.

The eldest brother is so powerful that the younger brother can't carry it, so Xiaori also introduced the introduction subsidy system. For example, as long as enterprises introduce foreign advanced technology, they will give half the value of imported equipment, which is equivalent to half the price.

So in the next two decades, Xiaori almost introduced the advanced technology invented by the world for half a century, and a number of Japanese enterprises rose with the trend. Hitachi's 64K DRAM chip ranks first in the world with a market share of 40%, and NEC also takes the lead in 256K chip. For a long time, invention and manufacturing were all my specialties, not to mention Toshiba, one of the five major military enterprises, not only engaged in semiconductors, but also nuclear energy, household appliances and computers. But as the saying goes, there are no eternal friends, only eternal interests. Even if the United States is the brother who helped it fly to Wan Li, Toshiba can give up this friendship at any time to make money.

As mentioned earlier, the story happened in the 1950s. At that time, apart from the end of World War II, there was another major event, that is, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States began for 44 years, only through arms and economic competition. Therefore, this is a war without gunpowder, but nuclear weapons must be arranged. After all, Fat Man and Little Boy were released only two years earlier than The Old Man and America. Whether he has you or not, it will happen one day.

However, it is easier said than done. Asu has many nuclear submarines, but it is also noisy. A typical example is the underwater acoustic shock generated by the Alpha-class attack nuclear submarine built by Asu when it is active in Norwegian waters. It can be detected by the old US Navy's water monitoring station on the other side of the Atlantic. After it approaches, it can accurately identify the type of submarine. You said that if such a submarine is put into actual combat, it will not be a head, so how to solve it?

It needs to import large-scale machine tools with high-precision machining capability to machine propellers, but you should know that since 1949, the United States and developed countries in the western camp have secretly joined hands to set up an export control coordination committee to restrict the development of Asu, mainly to restrict member countries from providing any preferential assistance to Asu for economic militarization, and there is an export control list, and all the CNC machine tools needed by Asu are on the list. Directly back to 1979, Xiong Gu, head of a foreign trade company in Xiaori, met Osipov, deputy manager of an import and export company in Asu. After learning that the Soviet Union needed to import four nine-axis, five-linkage CNC propeller milling machines and workstations with corresponding sizes, he felt that it was very cost-effective, so he brought together representatives from Norway's Kongsberg Company, which provided CNC systems, and Toshiba Company, which provided processing equipment. Under the sky-high contract of 3.7 billion yen, Toshiba agreed almost without hesitation. At that time, although there were restrictions and bans in the United States, in fact, countries secretly exported contraband. Just like at school, one was afraid of doing something wrong, but some people were brave enough, so Osipov first signed a contract with Toshiba. On the surface, it says that Japan will provide Asu with four two-axis CNC machine tools that are not on the control list. In fact, there is also a secret supply contract with nine axes and five linkages. At the same time, Asu signed an unrestricted CNC system with two-axis linkage with Norway and sent it to Japan. Then Toshiba technicians adjusted the system, changed the CNC system with two-axis linkage into a CNC system with nine-axis linkage and five-axis linkage. Moreover, in order to hide people's eyes and ears, the CNC machine tool was specially installed with dozens of containers, and it was not finished. In order not to complicate the customs, Kengo Kuma flew from Moscow to Tokyo, Japan, and personally rushed it. It takes money and relationships. The delivery of four machine tools took more than a year. Does this transaction process look seamless? But it's hard to guard against house thieves day and night.

At the end of 1985, Xiong Gudu, the matchmaker involved in the transaction, had a fierce conflict with his boss. After being forced to resign, in order to retaliate, he stopped pretending and reported the secret deal to the Committee established in the United States. I can't tell you why the Soviet nuclear submarine suddenly failed to detect it. It is said that this transaction makes the US Navy not sure to explore a new type of nuclear submarine even now. In a word, in the subsequent search, America obtained a photo with Toshiba logo printed in Asu propeller factory through CIA, and confirmed its behavior. In the face of hard evidence, Xiaori can no longer shield Toshiba. Half a month later, he arrested the director of casting department and the director of machine tool department of Toshiba machinery company, but then again, it was not only Toshiba company that committed the crime, but also companies such as France, Norway and Sweden. , whether they are punished together or not. How did it not only bring down Toshiba, but also affect the entire electronics manufacturing and semiconductor industry in Japan?

1986, Japanese semiconductor companies dominated the world, while American IBM was horribly poor. If it doesn't lay off more than10,000 people, bankruptcy will be the price. Similarly, Intel is also embarrassed. It lost money for six consecutive quarters and closed seven factories, which is about to become a joke. Can the United States stand by and watch its technological hegemony be shaken and indifferent? This is not the case, so it is not surprising that the United States chose to suppress Japan's semiconductor business step by step through the public opinion of Toshiba incident, and even initiated anti-dumping proceedings against its semiconductor manufacturers to reach a US-Japan semiconductor trade agreement. On the one hand, the United States imposes a punitive tariff of 100% on Japanese chips, on the other hand, it ensures that foreign companies gain 20% market share in Japan. What do you mean? The tariff on Japanese products has increased, which means that his chips will have to be sold more expensive if they want to return to their original cost. Compared with other competing products, it will lose its cost performance, and at the same time it will force Xiaori to buy products from foreign companies. That's not all. In April of the following year, the United States imposed a further tariff of 100% on Japanese computers and other products for unwarranted reasons, and asked Japanese companies such as Fujitsu and Mitsubishi to disclose more than 1000 patents for VLSI projects.

Did he say he handed it in? I'm not paying. What can it do? Look at the fate of Toshiba. After the Toshiba incident, the United States, led by members of Congress, took the lead in boycotting Toshiba products and passed a trade bill prohibiting Toshiba from exporting to the United States for five years. As we mentioned at the beginning, Toshiba was able to soar, on the one hand, because of policy support and rapid technical iteration, on the other hand, it also benefited from American military orders. But now, the old US military has cancelled the agreement to buy missile technology from Toshiba. Not only that, computers in the 1980s were almost all purchased by the government, so Toshiba directly lost the computer contract of15 billion yen originally planned by the old US Department of Defense, and Toshiba did not appear in the subsequent bidding. Without the core market order, it means that it is out of market demand, just like making clothes needs to keep up with the trend. If you don't know what is popular now, how can the clothes it makes sell well? So it happened that during the two years from 1985 to 1987, the Nikkei index nearly doubled, while Toshiba Machinery only increased by less than 3%. Although Toshiba invested 1 100 million yen in advertising its apology in various American media during this period, it could not escape this already arranged fate.

Trapped by the purchase blockade and tariff punishment of America, the Japanese semiconductor industry is gradually moving away from the American market. With the rise of TSMC and Samsung, American chip companies have obtained low-cost R&D and production environment, while the Japanese semiconductor industry, which is out of the trend of technological development, has plummeted from 49% to 7% in the global market. Since then, there have been no Japanese companies in the forefront of this semiconductor industry. After that, Toshiba seems to be possessed by a fairy, and the semiconductor industry is not doing well. Want to transform to nuclear power construction, finally bought 77% shares of Westinghouse Electric at three times the auction price, and then suffered from the Fukushima earthquake, which led to the overflow of nuclear waste from nuclear power plants, and countries began to reassess the construction of nuclear power plants. Toshiba's nuclear power department not only failed to get new orders, but also cancelled previous orders. To make matters worse, Westinghouse 15 acquired a nuclear power engineering service provider in the United States at the end of May, but the nuclear power business collapsed, leading to an increase in construction costs and labor costs, which indirectly led to a debt of $4.2 billion for Toshiba, the major shareholder, which may be the last straw to crush him. In April of the same year, Toshiba admitted that it had injected nearly160 billion yen into corporate profits in the past seven years. After the event was fermented, its stock plummeted and its market value shrank by nearly 40%. In the second year, it hit $8.8 billion, the biggest annual loss in Japanese manufacturing history. In order to fill the financial loophole, it has to keep on surviving. Toshiba, the former light of Japan, sold the most successful businesses one by one and the elevator business to Kone, Finland. The home appliance business was sold to Midea, the medical system company was sold to Canon, Westinghouse Electric filed for bankruptcy, and all the shares in the semiconductor department were used to make up for the losses and sold to Bain Capital of Laomei.

As the saying goes, eating people is soft-spoken and taking people short. For other countries, the higher they climb, the worse the ladder falls down. So sometimes I think it's really a good thing that the United States prohibits Huawei from buying chips. As Bill Gates said, the chip ban will not only cost them a lot of jobs, but more importantly, it will only make China invest more in the chip field, and will only promote China's self-sufficiency, although this road is still far away at present.