Japan is paying its companies to leave China and relocate production elsewhere as part of a stimulus deal in response to the Chinese coronavirus.
Japan has earmarked more than $2 billion of the nation’s economic stimulus package to assist its companies in moving out of China to relocate production, according to a report on Thursday by the South China Morning Post.
China has been Japan’s biggest trading partner, according to SCMP, but imports from China declined by almost half in February as the novel coronavirus — originating in Wuhan, central China — caused Japanese manufacturers in China to close.
The report added that a February survey by Tokyo Shoko Research found that 37 percent of the more than 2,600 companies that responded to Japan’s stimulus proposal were already looking at locations other than China due to the coronavirus pandemic.
