A148 Yes. The 1985 Plaza Accord, which led to the sudden rise in the value of the yen against the dollar, spurred on this over-seas expansion as exporting companies lost the ability to compete in terms of price and shifted to offshore production. At the start of the 1990s, when China emerged as the factory of the world, Japanese manufacturers expanded into China. As a result, a large number of domestic Japanese factories closed. In the space of 20 years, the number of people employed in manufacturing had fallen by 3.0 million-from 14.53 million in 1985 to 11.42 million in 2005.