What does “Japan-lite problems” mean?

It’s pity to learn our own country is viewed as a bad example for other countries not to follow. I found the word “Japan-lite problems” in the article of Time magazine (August 25 issue) titled “Six lessons Japan can teach the West”. It goes as follows:

“We have consistently taken the view that the Western world was suffering from ‘Japan-lite' problems: weak money supply growth, high levels of debt, lots of deleveraging, structurally weak growth and a rapidly deteriorating fiscal position. Given recent economic developments, perhaps ‘lite' should be replaced with ‘heavy'…The West is increasingly looking like a bad version of Japan. And, like Japan, our political leaders are offering few answers.”

I understand “-lite” is used as a suffix. But I don’t understand what “Japan-lite”really means.

COD (10th Ed.) defines “-lite” as “suffix forming names of rocks, minerals and fossils. From this, I hazard to guess “Japan-lite problems” implies petrified economic status of the country i.e., the quagmire Japan has been bogged in for a score of years without finding the exit, but I’m not sure.

The author says “’Japan-lite’ should be replaced with ‘Japan-heavy.’” It could be banter. But beside “Japan-light (heavy)”, are there such word as “Greece-lite (heavy),” “Italy-lite (heavy)” or even “America-lite (heavy)”, “German-lite (heavy)” and “China-lite (heavy)”?

Solution 1:

The -lite suffix is added as a way of implying a diminutive form of the noun it is modifying.

It draws from the word light meaning not heavy:

You can see the definition at dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/light

light² adjective — 1. of little weight; not heavy: a light load.

You can see examples of this applied to things like food and drink where the term lite is used to imply less fat or fewer calories.

So Japan-lite [X] means that [X] is like it is in Japan, only less so.

So one might say

The University of Hertfordshire produce Japan-lite AI.

So when Time suggest that Japan-lite should be replaced with Japan-heavy they are suggesting that the problems in the West are worse than those in Japan, although still comparable.

Solution 2:

"Lite" is just a clever way of spelling "light". This is often used in advertising to promote something as a lighter flavour or a diet variety of a product, e.g. Miller Lite beer.

In this sense, "Japan-lite" means something that is an imitation of Japan, only "low-fat", or "sugar-free", in other words, still unhealthy, but not as bad.