Huge structural hurdles lay before Japan and its neighbors. But there are plenty of smart and well-equipped engineers vigorously at work in Asia. And that's a human force to be reckoned with-a power that, although it can't be calculated on any spreadsheet, inevitably will rise up. In the early 1980s, analysts were predicting Japan would steal America's inventions and bury the United States with its manufacturing clout. Now Straszheim and others claim the United States will crush the economically and socially stultified Far East.
Tides fall, then rise again.
Analysts who write off Japan and Asia should beware the ultimate rise of a Pacific century. 2001 CMP Media Inc. All rights reserved.