This was and partly is the attitude you can find in german non-software businesses where software is gaining more and more influenxe. For example car manufacturing.

Yes this is true and it might possibly be true for the rest of East Asia though I'm not sure. Software is considered intangible and thus low value that anyone can do, whereas hardware is a real "thing" that you can hold in your hands, and is therefore more prestigious. Well, this way of thinking has made things into the current state.

This is historically the reason software engineering in Japan has lagged and there's such a talent shortage (leading companies like mine to hire mostly foreign software engineers). I've heard it's changing, but it'll take a long time to catch up.

When I was working for Microsoft China, many of our foreign engineers were Korean and Japanese, who were in China for the higher paychecks.