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Thinking the unthinkable, a Confucian union
By Jan Krikke
JOMTIEN, Thailand - In 10 to 15 years East Asia will form a political-economic
union along the lines of the European Union. It will follow the reunification
of the two Koreas, likely to occur around 2007. A "Confucian" union will
integrate Japan into East Asia the way the EU integrated Germany into Europe.
By about 2020, the East Asia Union will be the world's most powerful bloc,
ahead of the EU and US-led North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). And its core
will be China.
Amazing? Credible? Incredible? Making these bold predictions is Lawrence Taub,
an American futurist living in Tokyo, who recently visited Thailand. Taub has a
long record of forecasting global trends in astonishing detail. In the 1970s,
he predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall, Iran's Islamic Revolution, and the
entry of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar into the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN). His most recent book, which includes some of these
futurist concepts, is The Spiritual Imperative: Sex, Age, and the Last Caste.
Is Taub risking his reputation by predicting a Confucian Union between China,
Korea and Japan? Tensions are rising between Japan and South Korea over
fisheries and possibly mineral-rich islands and sea beds, still unexplored;
between Japan and China over oil and gas-rich islands where exploitation is
contested. Resentment toward Japan runs deep in both China and Korea, over
colonialism and World War II atrocities, and a union of almost any sort between
the three countries would seem improbable to most observers. But Taub is
adamant. "Enemies can become friends almost overnight," he told Asia Times
Online in a sit-down interview.
Taub predicted the formation of a Confucian Union in his book, but during an
interview with this correspondent he proposed an additional reason: that Korea
and China would be able to "neutralize" any Japanese military threat - both
nations are concerned about what they see as the threat of renewed Japanese
militarism - by absorbing it into a political union. That makes the overall
argument for a Confucian Union even more compelling.
"France and Germany formed the European Union less than a decade after fighting
a bitter war. The EU integrated Germany into the European family of nations and
neutralized its militaristic tendencies. But more importantly, the formation of
unions is a sign of our times. Regional economies are banding together. They
integrate their economies to pack a bigger punch in the global trade arena.
Unions like NAFTA, ASEAN, the EU, and Mercosur [a South American economic
union] make individual states stronger vis-a-vis other blocs."
Macro-history with a twist
Lawrence Taub is not an average, popular political observer or predictor of the
future. He is among a select group of scholars to have developed a
comprehensive macro-history. Macro-historians rely on "grand narratives" of
human history to forecast future scenarios. Recent examples are Francis
Fukuyama's The End of History and Samuel Huntington's The Clash of
Civilizations. Most historians and political commentators usually focus
on their own areas of expertise - economics, technology, culture, business -
which narrow the scope of their forecasts. Moreover, they tend to be
Eurocentric and male-oriented. Taub is neither. His macro-history draws on
Indian and Chinese thought, and like few other macro-historians, he claims
women will play a key role in shaping the future.
When asked about other historians, political commentators and futurists, Taub
quoted the American poet John Godfrey Saxe: "Though each was partly in the
right, all were in the wrong." He pointed to Alvin Toffler's "third wave"
theory as an example. "Toffler accurately describes the transition from
agricultural to industrial to post-industrial society. That's a valid model,
but it's only part of the picture. Toffler's macro-history could not predict
the rise of East Asia as the world's leading economic center, nor the emergence
of religious fundamentalism as the strong political force that it has become,
which in the long run will evolve and have profound socio-economic implications
in the future."
The caste model
The centerpiece of Taub's macro-history is what Taub calls the Caste Model, a
remarkable synthesis of the ancient Indian Theory of Caste and actual
historical development. Most observers agree that the world's economic center
of gravity is moving from the West to East Asia, but Taub's Caste Model gives
this historical shift a theoretical basis. Taub argues the world is in the
midst of a transition from the merchant caste age to the worker caste age.
 Taub
explained that the merchant caste age was dominated by capitalists,
industrialists and landowners. Its source of power was capital and its social
ideal the "self-made man". The worker caste age is dominated by technocrats and
bureaucrats. Its source of power is scientific and managerial knowledge, and
its social ideal is the "organization man". Taub acknowledged that East Asia
also has its merchants, but he argued that Confucian Asia is more in tune with
the worker caste age than either Europe or the United States.
Taub said several factors will make the formation of a Confucian Union
inevitable, among them a shared cultural heritage and growing international
competition. "Despite a turbulent past and lingering animosity, the three
countries speak the same cultural language, and their economies are
increasingly integrated. Last year, China replaced the United States as Japan's
largest trading partner. With the largest dollar reserves in the world, Japan
and China resemble two mountain climbers linked by a rope. Technological
cooperation between China, Japan and Korea is growing. Over-reliance on US-made
software has fueled concerns about national security and industrial espionage
and led to an initiative to develop CJK Linux, an Asian version of open source
software."
Korean unification
Taub believes a reunified Korea will precede the formation of a Confucian
Union. Asked about how reunification would come about, he said it would not be
a repeat of the German experience. "North Korea is much poorer than East
Germany was at the time," he told Asia times Online. "Spontaneous reunification
is unlikely. But there will be a parallel with the German example. Just before
it happens, when it will seem impossible, the momentum toward reunification
will surge rapidly. The momentum is likely to start building in 2006, with
reunification probably in 2007. The last hurdle will be the fate of North
Korea's current leaders. They will insist on guarantees they won't be thrown in
jail. China may offer them asylum."
Recent developments appear to support Taub's forecast. In December last year,
the Guardian reported that European policymakers have been advised to prepare
for "sudden changes" in North Korea. A European delegation, after visiting
Pyongyang, predicted the collapse of the regime. The Guardian also cited
Chinese academics who report a growing number of defections among North Korean
diplomats. The South Korean press reported that the Austrian police prevented
the assassination of Kim Jong-il's son Kim Jong-nam, by backers of another son
of Kim Jong-il. All signs point at a power struggle in the top of the North
Korean leadership, which in turn may explain the dying nation's nuclear
saber-rattling.
Confucianism, communism, nationalism
Taub said he does not foresee problems with democratic Japan and Korea forming
a political union with communist China. He believes pragmatism will prevail. He
also pointed out that communism has become a mere label in China's political
theater, but argued at the same time that communism and Confucianism have many
similarities.
"Confucianism and communism, especially as introduced by Mao [Zedong] Ho [Chi
Minh], and Kim [Jong-il], were compatible," he said. "Confucianism, like
communism, has no Godfather figure. And communism's strong state sits well with
Confucian tradition, which is centered on the group, the family, the community,
and the state. When the Deng Xiaoping government initiated reform, the
ideological transition was smooth. The government didn't have to worry about
the weight of opposing tradition, only about the Gang of Four - Mao's wife
Jiang Ching and her three Cultural Revolution radical allies. All it had to do
was go from socialism without a free market and private enterprise to socialism
with a free market and private enterprise."
Taub has argued the name "socialist democracy" is not an oxymoron. "It
perfectly describes the half-communist, half-capitalist hybrid system that all
industrialized or industrializing countries are currently developing," he said.
"It is a system that is half market and private business-driven and half highly
central-government-regulated. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan also have that
system - in fact Japan pioneered it - but they call themselves capitalist. Most
Western European countries call themselves social democracies, which sounds
pretty close to socialist democracy."
William Kelly, intercultural communications lecturer at the University of
Southern California who wrote a foreword to Taub's books, pointed out that
nationalism - strong in China and Korea and growing in Japan - will not
necessarily be a hindrance to the formation of a Confucian Union. "It is
obvious that the only way to fulfill the desire for national glory as well as
economic success is by getting together in a union and being stronger than the
other two blocs [the EU and NAFTA]," said Kelly. "First, Japanese militarism
could be neutralized by such a bloc. But the real future danger could be
Chinese rather than Japanese nationalism, since there is much resentment and a
sense of grievance behind it."
Paradox
How should the United States respond to Asia's growing economic clout? Taub
said America would do well to support the formation of a Confucian bloc. "The
United States' main fear is that China will dominate global trade and
technology, and emerge as an economic and military threat to the US," he said.
"China has to make political and economic reforms before it can become a global
power, but it eventually will make these reforms. This will transform China
into a liberal democracy like Japan and Korea. Liberal democracies don't make
war on each other. So it's not likely China will pose a military threat to the
US. That's the paradox of the current worker caste age. A country can't become
a real global military threat until it becomes a liberal democracy. But then it
is no longer a threat."
The American government frequently pressures the Chinese government to further
reform its system. Taub agrees with this approach, but points out that the US
also needs reform. If the US doesn't overhaul its social-economic system, he
said, it will drop too far behind the EU and the emerging Confucian bloc. "The
US, like all other advanced countries, has a worker-age system, and its ruling
elite is mainly worker caste. But half its mind is still stuck in the merchant
age: money and wealth at any price. The United States' merchant caste and its
world view made the US the leading country in the world. This explains why
countries that reach the top in one age, tend to lose power in a subsequent
age. They find it hard to change a winning formula, even as the system starts
cracking at the seams. The first impulse is to reach for patches."
Taub said the foreign and domestic policy of US President George W Bush
reflects this merchant-age backwardness. "The invasion of Iraq was, in part,
classic merchant age: start a war for business purposes - oil, weapons,
reconstruction contracts, etc. The United States' merchant-minded leadership is
making it hard for working Americans to do their jobs, and use their
professional/managerial skills to keep the country competitive. Medical and
legal costs are out of control, 45 million people lack health insurance,
teachers are underpaid and undervalued, and filing lawsuits is a national
pastime that squanders precious resources. If China has to make reforms to
become competitive, the US must make reforms to stay competitive."
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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