The Japanese initiative will do better than the European one - Japan has quietly become a major white collar destination for Korean and Chinese nationals after

The Japanese initiative will do better than the European one - Japan has quietly become a major white collar destination for Korean and Chinese nationals after COVID, especially in fields like Materials Science which tend to have much stronger East Asian representation than other fields. METI also has a stronger muscle around R&D promotion and commercialization compared to similar initiatives across Europe with come across as overly bureaucratic with leaders without domain experience. That said, in the medium term it's still difficult to compete with the amount of private capital and grants for R&D (and the associated commercialization capabilities) in the US, but Japan is rebuilding that muscle. I think European leaders need to think deep down about whether they are EU first or nation first - the inability for EU and national initiatives in R&D to take off is due to this grey area that exists. And if I'm being honest - a mid tier European univeristy like Aix-Marseilles or Bath just can't compete with an imperial university like Tohoku University.