The research theme of this paper is to clarify the reasons and background of why Toyota selected Tianjin Automobile as its domestic passenger car joint venture partner and proceeded with the joint venture business in the early 1990s. As a research method, I use oral history. According to Nomura(2017)’s definition, Oral history is a form of interviewing that focuses on past events or specific periods of time related to the subject in a retrospective manner. This method not only fills in the gaps in the records on the front stage, but also delves into behindthe-scenes information and the inner lives of the people involved, by preserving information that would otherwise have been lost. In this way, we can not only fill in the gaps in the records of the front stage, but also delve into the behind-the-scenes information and the inner lives of the people involved. Based on this idea, this research is a record of interviews conducted with four people by adopting the “semi-structured interview” method, which allows the interviewer to pose questions freely while setting a certain number of common questions to be addressed.
The interviews were conducted with the following four individuals with the following positions.
Mr. A : Chief representative, Beijing office, Toyota Motor.
Mr. B : Manager, at Asia Division, and Chief representative, Beijing office, Toyota Motor.
Mr. C : Project general manager, Beijing, Tianjin, Chengdu and Shanghai office, Toyota Motor.
Mr. D : General Manager, Beijing Office, Toyota-Tsusho.
In response to the question of why Toyota chose Tianjin Automobile as its joint venture partner, each of the four left a testimony from their own perspective. Mr. A emphasized the impatience of Toyota’s senior management. Mr. B pointed out that “New Industry Policy of Automobile” in 1994 was very important. Toyota conducted the business plan from parts supplier to car maker though Tianjin-Daihatsu project. Mr. C pointed out that Tianjin-Daihatsu was not a joint venture, but only a technical assistance production, and that there was a policy of fostering Tianjin Automobile as a domestic enterprise by Chinese government. Mr. D pointed out that the Chinese government wanted to use Toyota to rebuild the management of Tianjin Automobiles, and that the background of the government’s intention was the dark history between Japan and China. As E. H. Carr (1961) pointed out, "different narrators approach the facts in different ways, and different interpretations are created," which was demonstrated in this research.
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