Two countries in East Asia prompt students and visitors to think of them as likely to occupy, in the twenty-first century, a commanding world position. I have in mind, of course, that writers like Norman Macrae of the Economist and Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute look at the Japanese system and project performance that will place Japan in the very forefront of world economies within the next twenty-five years—and this despite the relatively small size of the country and its almost total lack of natural resources. On the other hand, visitors like former Supreme Court Justice Douglas, Kenneth Scott Galbraith of Harvard, and many others have visited China and left it saying, in effect: “I have seen the future, and it works!”