To be sure, the region provides evidence of the persistence of tradition, and even of its actual strengthening, under conditions of modernization. In a world in which various kinds of religious fundamentalism are burgeoning on every hand as a response to the perceived threats of modernization and Westernization, it seems appropriate to inquire whether the nations on the Pacific Rim may be experiencing some of the same tendencies. I see little evidence that the Pacific Rim is anywhere generating the kind of intense reassertion of tradition that is evident in many parts of the Muslim world, but there are indications that some Asian populations are in some ways reinvigorating traditions that had been slipping away under the impact of forces for change. In some cases, the pattern seems to be one in which an externally forced process of change, such as that imposed by the cultural revolution in China, has been lifted, permitting the expression of value commitments that had never fully died out. At least this is the interpretation I put on the data from Baoding, China, where the now adult offspring are more likely than their elderly parents, who lived through the Maoist era, to disagree with the modern idea that obligations to children or careers should come ahead of obligations to parents.
Ancestor worship is a widespread and deep-seated element of many Asian cultures.
Yet one might also expect that it has been eroded by the acids of the modernizing experience. It is, therefore, notable that in Taiwan there seems to have been a resurgence of commitment to this ancient tradition. Between 1963 and 1991, the proportion of Taiwanese who claimed to have attended an ancestor worship ceremony increased from 39 percent to 75 percent. Something similar, although less dramatic, may have occurred in Shanghai. Likewise, consider the case of Japan.