~This Issue's Index~

Visions
From the Editors

The face of the Asia-Pacific—the way the region sees itself and is seen by the rest of the global community—has changed dramatically over the past millennium. Scrolling back to 1000 AD, we find a China reunified only decades before into the Song dynasty after the collapse of the flourishing and multicultural Tang. The most centralized empire China had seen up to that point, the Song crystalized the notion of an examination-based bureaucracy that was to dominate Chinese political culture through the turn of this century. This style of administration heavily influenced Korea, which was had reunified less than a century earlier into the Koryo dynasty and was rapidly adopting Chinese political structures. The subcontinent, meanwhile, established itself as a crossroads for Eastern and Western material and intellectual products, which brought economic prosperity to the region. Japan was moving toward a break with Chinese culture that would allow it to formulate a more uniquely Japanese culture, while seeing the emergence of a warrior aristocracy. Vietnam had recently gained independence from Chinese rule, and Cambodia was developing what was arguably the most intricate irrigation system of the ancient world.

A thousand years later, Japan leads the world in technological advances while North and South Korea gaze at each other suspiciously across a great divide. China is anxiously looking to open trade relations with the West and take its place as a growing economic force, and Southeast Asia struggles with economic turmoil and ethnic violence. As the world’s largest democracy, India experiments with nuclear power and nurtures a ginger relationship with neighboring Pakistan.

Regional peace may not have arrived in time for the year 2000. Still, at this numerical turning point, it is the people of Asia that are its most remarkable feature, from the leaders to the led, from the trendsetters to the trendspotters. This issue highlights the visions of several remarkable leaders, from the Governor of Korea’s North Cholla Province and his take on Korea’s economic future, to the Governor of Taiwan’s Tainan County. As leaders look toward the fu-ture,
the people continue to remember the past, as can be seen in the Review’s illuminating interview with Dr. Ts. Tsetsenbileg, an expert on the enduring influence of Ghengis Khan upon the Mongolian imagination. Complementing these perspectives are the more skeptical arguments of scholars Xavier Gros and Alain Schebath, who see an adherence to traditional ways of life as cause
for concern in modern Japan. Without championing one view above the others,
we bring you this range to illustrate that there are many issues at stake as Asia enters the next millennium; the future cannot be pinned to one particular path.

While the division between church and state has always been a deeply sensitive issue in the West, it is in this century that the clash between religion and politics has risen to the forefront in the Asian landscape, as the region’s religions and philosophical traditions undergo reappraisal and take on new meaning in the Asian psyche. Buddhism, which had already become deeply entrenched in much of Asia by the turn of the last millenium, changed the face
of Asia’s religions. Now, one thousand years later, religion continues to impact both Asian culture and politics in ever-changing ways; the millennium has been heralded with the emergence of new religious sects such as Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo cult, which Helen Hardacre places under the magnifying glass of intellectual scrutiny. Other groups have emerged in silent protest of existing political institutions. Nancy Chen looks at the Falungong movement, declared the Chinese Communist Party’s public enemy number one in 1999, while Richard Madsen takes a historical look at another group of Chinese religious disenters, China’s Catholics.

From the changing face of politics and religion, we move on to several reflections upon the future of more cultural institutions, from Singaporean education to Japanese literature. Finally, no discussion of Asia’s future would be complete without acknowledging its economic state; authors as diverse as Korea’s Kim and Moon and India’s Goswami seriously discuss keys to the re-emergence of Asia from the recent economic crisis.

Taken as a whole, this collection of articles is intended to bring together a variety of perspectives on the changing face of Asia in the 21 st century. And while we do not claim to have been entirely comprehensive in our scope, perhaps the key point we would like to make is that the face of Asia is indeed
changing in all its aspects—cultural, political, economic. This dynamic inter-play of factors promises increasingly to enliven the lives of Asian peoples and their interaction with the rest of the world.