All the changes are slower and more contested as democracy has taken root and vested interests find ways of resisting. Japan's system of bureaucratic leadership was great for guiding the breakthroughs for higher literacy, building the infrastructure, and starting the industrial revolution. In areas where Japan has faced the best competition in the world, as in industrial products, Japanese organizations proved superior. But in domestic financial services and selecting faculty for universities, which have not been subject to open competition, it will take decades before Japan can undo its past and catch up with world standards. Yet today, as in the entire twentieth century except for the late 1980s, the world underestimates Japan.
Japan is still the world's number two economy and the world's largest creditor.
It retains its organizational skills and a highly trained and disciplined work force, but it will take decades to complete the institutional changes required to reach global standards in financial services and creative thinking for basic research. China must still divest itself of state enterprises that soak up investment capital and make a transition to private housing, medical care, and welfare that will take perhaps half a century to finance at the levels of advanced countries. But the policy of rapid development of China's inland areas will lay the basis for inner China completing the industrial breakthrough in the early decades of the next century. Korea and China still suffer the problems of division as a result of the Cold War. Both may take decades to resolve, but the close economic, social, and informational contacts between Taiwan and mainland China will, with increased confidence on both sides, create the basis for a deal.