Australia and New Zealand are far better linked with the rest of the world through Internet than Japan is. Because of its leadership. One of the most important things to recognize is that success in the 21st century will be very different from success in the 19th century. Competition among the regions in the 21st century will depend on the quality of their political leaders. They must be able to realign the legal and administrative systems so as to be compatible with information technology.
Most nation states have too many vested-interest groups controlling their future.
If you do that, you will have a tremendous handicap in developing your domestic industry to create wealth within the country, and in the use of wealth to make the country prosperous. In other words, you have to generate solutions of prosperity from within the country. A country like Singapore, with no natural resources and no room to grow food, etc., had to resort to the goodwill of the rest of the world. But Mr. Lee Kuan Yew did far more than that. He was the first to see that a country without resources could prosper if you have the global logic, capital markets, corporations and communications working for you.