The Japanese takes overcorrecting measures for economic boom in the 90s and formed a habit of avoiding updates of fixed asset investments. The habit causes an issue, which is refusing updates of anything including their products. Many Japanese products implies that philosophy, such as the Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, the Topre keyboard and the Land Cruiser made by Toyota. They are good ones though, they just never change it for long.
On the other hand, although Chinese products are in low quality, they keep coming and evolving. Consumers have a scale inside and if the quality of low price products exceeds a critical point- a threshold which they can stand with, they are more willing to buy the cheaper one. If Chinese products keep coming through the point, they will gradually capture the market share and the Japanese companies will be falling. (As long as the price of Chinese products do not rise too much in the process.)
Everyone has that threshold. Except the fact the threshold is particularly low for consumers in China.
Maybe there is deeper reason for this phenomenon. If a country is willing to embrace debt, he is willing to keep updates as well. Also, it may be not a bad arrangement for some nations to choose not to update infrastructure frequently. Many ethnic groups/nations are long infamous for taking the gamble and starting a war when they are highly indebted.(Think about how the ww1 and ww2 initialized, they all come from debt and economic crisis. The ww2 can even trace back to the origins of 1929 economic crisis in the US and the Americans cancel the loans to Germans which drastically caused trouble for their living and became the last straw that breaks the camelback. The only difference is that at that time, the weapons are not so developed and the man who runs the country may think they will not suffer death or injury from the war.) It’s not a bad thing to constrain their fixed asset investments so as to contain their debt before anything happens. The Chinese people are peaceful and not interested in occupying other nations’ land. A little debt to increase fixed asset investments will help achieve better economic growth.