RENÉ HAAK joined the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo in 1999 and is now head of the business and economics section, and deputy director. He was previously Senior Researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production and Design Technology, and Research Fellow at the Institute for Machine Tools and Manufacturing Technology at the Technical University of Berlin. He has written numerous articles on production technology and strategic management in Japan and Germany. He is the co-editor with Hanns Günther Hilpert of Japan and China: Cooperation, Competition and Conflict, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2002.