The Global Future Has an Asian Face : The drive and determination that propelled America now belong to Korean students and Chinese working mothers.

By Tom Plate

April 23, 1996 12 AM PT

Tom Plate's column runs Tuesdays. His e-mail address is <tplate></tplate>

I have seen the future, and, I’m sorry to say, I don’t think it’s us.

I have seen the future in the determined eyes of the modern Beijing woman, child tucked in the harness behind her bicycle seat, pedaling against the driving rain and wind, fighting the morning traffic to get her child to the drop-off center on her way to work.

I have seen the future in the bemused face of the Taiwanese businessman when I ask how many millions his export-import firm shells out on lawyers. He laughs. He tells me that most businessmen and officials in Asia consider overly formal law the bane of Western society. They believe that what’s crucial in business relationships is character and that lawyers’ fees are nothing but an unnecessary tax on business prosperity. With great pride he then points out, as many Asians are wont to do if you give them half a chance, how individual wealth in East Asia, despite rapidly growing populations, nearly quadrupled over the last 25 years.

I have seen the future in the unforgettably beautiful face of the exhausted South Korean high school girl. She gets on the bus early in the morning and, following her after-school classes, does not get home until near midnight. I remember reading somewhere that as recently as the close of the Korean War, 75% of South Korea’s adults were illiterate. Now a teenager there has at least as great a chance of entering university studies as his or her counterpart in Japan. Between 1970 and 1992, enrollment in Korean secondary schools more than doubled, reaching 90% of student-age kids. In Japan, virtually all high school students graduate. In the U.S. these days, 71% do.

I have seen the future in the cosmopolitan eyes of the well-dressed foreign ministry official in Beijing. He’s of youngish middle age, brilliant and delightfully irreverent about almost everything. He informs me that he will be posted to America soon. To Washington, right? Oh no, much too boring, he says. “In the Chinese foreign service, you get to choose.” So he wants either Los Angeles or New York because “the discos and night life are better there.” This is the face of the new, pragmatic, globalized Beijing bebopper.

I have seen the future in Seoul’s rush hour, a Felliniesque nightmare of chills and thrills decidedly not for the timid. “Koreans are in a hurry and traffic is the best symbol of what they’re like,” says J. Moon Choi, president of Fluor Daniel Korea Ltd., in the Seoul office of the Orange County-based international engineering firm. “The thing you must understand is that Koreans don’t want to wait. And they won’t.” Neither does, or will, much else of Asia: In only a few decades, Asia most likely will boast five of the world’s six largest national economies; the U.S. will be the other. It will be home to 16 of the world’s 25 largest cities. It’s interesting: 30 years ago Brazil’s per capital gross national product was double that of Taiwan. Today Taiwan’s GNP is six times Brazil’s.

I have seen the future in the eyes of the American journalist who moved to Tokyo, she says, because after living all those frightened years in America, she does not fear for her life at night in Tokyo. I ask why Tokyo’s streets are safer. She says that culture is a factor and, she says, “the gap between the rich and the poor is not that great in Japan and thus the need to mug for money just to survive is not well developed.” In fact, for many Asian societies, the income gap is less than that in America.

I have seen the future in the engrossed look on the face of the Korean professor as he talks about the Hong Kong miracle, pointing out how for a long time the tiny island absorbed more than 100,000 “illegal aliens” every year. In Hong Kong and elsewhere, these people became known not as problems but as opportunities, not as interlopers but as aspects of prosperity. Such a positive attitude may be a prerequisite to success.

I have seen the future in the glowing faces of South Korean politicians as they talk in loving detail about last month’s dramatic victory by the Korean national soccer team over rival Japan. The gusto of the triumph reminds me that basically there is no single, unified Asia except in the simplifying mind of the cartographer. The noun “Asia” covers not only an immense area but an immensely diverse one, too, characterized more by national competition than by regional cooperation.

I have seen the future in the wisdom of the professor of international relations who’s now a key member of the Taiwanese government. “America has to learn more about us, just as we have bothered to learn so much about you--your politics, your language, your ways. Your officials are not familiar with our domestic politics. This is a severe shortcoming. And you need to teach Asian history and cultures in your schools. And you need to build a bipartisan consensus about the need for U.S. involvement in Asia. You don’t have that. It will hurt you. It’s dangerous for us all.”

Sure, Asia’s many nations have their share of problems and faults. But as Confucius put it, “If a man take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.”