akihiko sato

Today, emerging economies like BRICs and Next 11 have drawn more attention. About half of them are Asian countries. International locations of Japanese Multinational Corporations have shifted to Asia. This paper focuses on the Lao People's Democratic Republic, and I investigate the location of Japanese textile and apparel corporations there. The research topics are the three points: (1) to analyze the locational environments and the locational trends and characteristics of Japanese corporations, (2) to consider the locational process and strategies of Japanese corporations through the case studies, and (3) to clarify the direction of the location of Japanese corporations after China. The results show the three points. (1) Many FDI to Laos are made by the neighboring countries for resources. Also, there are more FDI and business diversity of Japanese corporations in Vientiane recently. (2) The case studies show that the locational shift to Laos results from a rise in production costs in China and Thailand. While there are many attractive factors such as low production costs, few competitors etc., there are some problems in employment and human training. (3) Two future directions exist; one is international division of labor between the emerging economies and the neighboring countries, and the other is development of emerging markets.